More notes on "The Disappearing Spoon"

[continuation in part]

I'm reading a book and posting comments about it. I'm on page 27:

Electron behavior drives the periodic table. But to really understand the elements, you can't ignore the part that makes up more than 99 percent of their mass---the nucleus. And whereas electrons obey the laws of the greatest scientist never to win the Nobel Prize, the nucleus obeys the dictates of probably the most unlikely Nobel laureate ever, a woman whose career was even more nomadic than Lewis's.

Maria Goeppert-Mayer. I blogged about her here. She was the poster girl for how badly science used to treat women. Kean tells a good story, but mischaracterizes one aspect which I'd like to correct and add to. At page 28, middle of the second paragraph:

After the Depression lifted, hundreds of her intellectual peers gathered for the Manhattan Project, perhaps the most vitalizing exchange of scientific ideas ever. Goeppert-Mayer received an invitation to participate, but peripherally, on a useless side project to separate uranium with flashing lights. No doubt she chafed in private, but she craved science enough to continue to work under such conditions.

I object to the characterization of "useless side project to separate uranium with flashing lights," or whatever that means. What Goeppert-Mayer was working on was the separation of uranium isotopes, under the direction of H.C. Urey at Columbia University. I suppose that work could be characterized as "useless" because ultimately gaseous diffusion solved the problem. But Goeppert-Mayer did make a valuable contribution to science during the war. The results were declassified and finally published in 1947 and became the seminal paper for the science of isotope effect chemistry.

Years ago, I corresponded with Jacob Bigeleisen, the doyen of that branch of science. He was her junior coworker at Columbia U on the Manhattan Project and was a coauthor of the 1947 paper I mentioned above. I happened to ask him about his role in isotope chemistry and he opened up, telling me a great story involving her which I already blogged on here. It's long, but well worth a read. I'm just going to re-post the part where he later told a reporter about the amazing moment when he was briefly overwhelmed by Goeppert-Mayer's brilliance. Bigeleisen had been struggling to derive an equation and to simplify it. Goeppert-Mayer glanced at his work and instantly finished it for him:

She looked at my work and asked 'why don't you finish it up by taking out the classical part?'  Without a pause, she wrote the simplified equation, saying 'Now you have it; it's all done.' I didn't immediately understand what she meant when she said to cut out the classical part. I went home. I worked on it, and eventually I got the same result. link

I suppose that those with an ax to grind could subtitle that moment in time "superior female intellect briefly overwhelms male dominance." I'm sure that she had other moments later on. But all the players are now dead and together somewhere, I suppose.

Steelies

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debase the currency. -- V.I. Lenin

If we ever get into another full scale shooting war, it's going to cost dearly just to buy all the brass needed to make ammo casings (shells) for bullets.  We've traditionally made them out of brass (copper alloyed with a little zinc).  The Russians and Chinese make their bullet casings out of steel. Because spent cartridges are essentially thrown away on the battlefield, perhaps this is not a bad idea.

We traditionally made pennies out of copper and its alloys: chart  Since 1982, the U.S. Mint has made pennies out of zinc coated with thin layer of copper to keep up appearances. As of 2010, it cost the Mint 1.79 cents to make a penny because of the costs of the penny's materials and production.

As a kid, I used to go to the bank and buy rolls of pennies. Back then (the late 1960's to early '70's) I could still find lots of bronze "wheat pennies" in circulation. I'd comb through change looking to fill those Blue Whitman folders with pennies. Except for the really rare ones, or the pre-WW II ones in good condition, I did all right. Once and a while I'd find a 1943 steel penny.  I could find them easily in a pile of pennies using a magnet. I got 3 or 4 steel pennies that way. I had to buy the "S" one though. Coins minted in San Francisco were always harder to come by east of the Rockies. And the ones I got were never as nice looking as the one in the photo:

1943-s Steel Cent

Fiat Is Not Just An Italian Car Company

From The Telegraph:

One of the big US banks texted me today to say that if QE3 actually happens, we could see gold at $5,000 and silver at $1,000. I feel terribly sorry for anybody on fixed incomes tied to a fiat currency because they are not going to be able to buy things with that paper money.

Interesting push back in the comments at that link.

A German banknote from the great inflation of the Weimar Republic.  I saved it from when I used to collect such things as a kid:

A 10,000 Mark note from 1922. 

Conversations with Henry

[Continued from here]

At Henry's suggestion, I wrote to Jacob Bigeleisen. He replied:*

[Salutation]:

How did I get into isotope chemistry? In 1943 I worked at SAM Laboratory at Columbia U (Manhattan Project). My initial assignment was to look for isotope shifts in the electronic spectra of uranium compounds (principally uranyl ion). The purpose of this research was to examine the feasibility of a photochemical separation of the uranium isotopes for military purposes. It was a small project. It was here that I became acquainted with Maria Mayer. She worked on the theory of the spectra. I did experiments and consulted with her regularly about my results and her results. The project was reviewed in July 1943 by James B. Conant and Richard C. Tolman, two high officials in the war time science effort. They brought along as an advisor E.B. Wilson, Jr., the outstanding spectroscopist and quantum chemist from Harvard. The Committee found our work very interesting, but recommended that it be discontinued. The time schedule for any practical application of a photochemical process was inconsistent with the plans for the production of a weapon. People like Urey favored a small scale continuing effort as part of scientific intelligence. Was this a path the Germans could be following?

The dozen or so people working on the project were reassigned in September. I was assigned to write up the work of the project as a final report, which was issued under the name of H.C. Urey. Maria Mayer went to the hospital in October 1943 for gall bladder surgery. In late November an assistant of Urey's (one of his former graduate students) Isidor Kirschenbaum came to see me. He said 'you know all about spectra of uranium compounds.' I said I didn't know everything; what was known, I knew. He said: 'Here is this formula. Put in the information about all uranium compounds and give me the results. We are interested in the possible chemical separation of the uranium isotopes. What we would be particularly interested in would be a volatile compound, which dissociates in the vapor. We have reason to believe that this would be very favorable.'  I asked: 'How do you know this?'  He said he could not tell me. I looked at the formula he gave me. It was the Urey-Greiff equation. I told him that I was not familiar with that whole field and I would have to study it out before I put numbers into the equation. He then said: 'Don't you know there is a war on?' He reported to Urey that I was not a very cooperative person.

Well I studied out the Urey-Greiff equation. There are a lot of factors. For uranium compounds, I could see that we did not know some of the factors; for some of the factors the number was of the order +1.001; for some of the factors the number was -1.001. With the computing facilities available then (desktop mechanical calculators) one could get any final answer from +1.00x to -1.00x from the Urey-Greiff equation. So, I decided I would look into a different approach. In chemistry and most of physics, one does not measure absolute quantities. One measures differences. Would it be possible to calculate differences directly instead of absolute quantities and then subtract the two to get the isotope effect? I started on this approach and I completed the zero point energy and the Boltzmann excitation terms.

On Monday after Thanksgiving 1943 Maria Mayer returned to work. She asked me how I was coming along with the final report. I told her I was not working on it. 'What was I doing?' she asked. I explained the problem to her and showed her my progress. This was a general type of problem she was thoroughly familiar with. In collaboration with George E. Kimball and Walter Stockmayer, she had calculated the isotope effect in the reaction HD + H₂O = H₂ + HDO. This reaction was used to produce heavy water at a plant in Trail B.C. and in Norway.) She was also familiar with the general subject since she and her husband, Joe Mayer, had just written a book on statistical mechanics. I had studied this book as a graduate student. She found my approach very interesting, very sensible and very promising. She then volunteered by asking me whether she could join me in working on this project. I said sure, that would be great. So she did and by the end of the day we completed the derivation of the Bigeleisen-Mayer equation. [1] We then made a number of predictions of systems that would be hopeless for uranium isotope separation and pointed to potential interesting avenues. An experimental program was then organized under Clyde Hutchinson. I worked on that for about a half a year.

Urey was too occupied to look into what we had done. His deputies either did not understand or did not believe that a green Ph.D. new to the field could simplify the Urey-Greiff equation to the point where meaningful calculations could be made. There was a lot of secrecy and people were not told everything they needed to know to make the best progress. In April I became involved in determining the structure of UF₆ by spectroscopic means. I did the experiments at American Cyanamid in Stamford, Conn., where they had outstanding spectroscopic equipment. I worked on the analysis of the the spectra with Maria Mayer, who had tried two years earlier in collaboration with Edward Teller to predict the vibrational structure of UF₆ from first principles! I told Maria Mayer when I started on that project that it was an experimental project, not one for calculation. She asked me whether I could do it (determine the Raman spectrum). She took out of her drawer the infra-red spectrum which had been measured by John Turkevich at Princeton. Neither she, Turkevich nor Edward Teller were able to decipher the infra-red spectrum of UF₆. While Maria Mayer and I worked on the analysis of the spectra, from which we deduced unequivocally the regular octahedral structure, in contrast to the electron diffraction results of Simon Bauer, she told me that she had written a summary report of our work on the theory of isotope effects in equilibria and our calculations relevant to uranium isotope separation.

She prepared this report at the request of Martin Kilpatrick, Urey's deputy to whom we reported. The reason for this was that Edward Teller was to make one of his regular consulting visits from Los Alamos. Kilpatrick showed Teller Maria Mayer's report of our work. Teller had also worked on this problem (there is a 1938 paper by Herzfeld and Teller). He told Kilpatrick that the work was correct and first class. Kilpatrick reported to Maria Mayer that Teller approved of the work. Fine. That made her furious. She said to me: 'They trust Edward Teller and not me.'

Regards to Henry. Pass this message on to him.

Jacob Bigeleisen

__________________________________
* Bigeleisen wrote to me in longhand. I transcribed it here. I supplied the links as well in case anyone was interested.

[1] Bigeleisen later retold a reporter about this amazing moment when he was briefly overwhelmed by Maria Mayer's brilliance:

She looked at my work and asked 'why don't you finish it up by taking out the classical part?'  Without a pause, she wrote the simplified equation, saying 'Now you have it; it's all done.' I didn't immediately understand what she meant when she said to cut out the classical part. I went home. I worked on it, and eventually I got the same result.

Conversations with Henry: I knew him you know

Henry: I saw your post about isotopes. I knew the guy who discovered kinetic isotope effects.

Me: You did?

Henry: Yes. Jacob Bigeleisen. We roomed together during graduate school at Berkeley. He wasn't famous then of course. That came later. He went to Columbia afterwards. That was early in the war, when the Manhattan Project was still in Manhattan.

Me: Wow! Tell me more about it!

[Henry shuffles the deck and deals us both five new cards]

Last Letters From Stalingrad: #8

...Again I am writing a short letter, although I wrote one to you and a second one to Hans Müllner only yesterday. You certainly can't complain about lack of mail. A buddy will take this one along. I wish Grandmother a happy 74th birthday, and I am sorry that I cannot eat a piece of her cake. Can you get the things you need to bake a cake? No cake for us, but once we are out of here, we'll have everything again; until then we simply have to tighten our belts. Go to the saving bank, take out fifty marks, and buy Grandmother a present. She is to enjoy herself. The Bergers probably have some coffee left, her husband being with the port administration. If they have some, they will certainly give it to you. You just tell them it's for the birthday party. In my time I have done the Bergers many favors.

I am writing nothing but nonsense. But nonsense is better than no mail at all. And you never know if the next bullet won't have your name on it. But don't be afraid for us. I am sure we'll get out of here, and then we'll all go home on leave for four weeks. It's very cold here now; do you have snow too? We don't have to strew and sand here; everyone has to look out so he doesn't fall.

Last Letters From Stalingrad: #7

...You are the wife of a German officer; so you will take what I have to tell you, upright and unflinching, as upright as you stood on the station platform the day I left for the East. I am no letter-writer and my letters have never been longer than a page. Today there would be a great deal to say, but I will save it for later, i.e., six weeks if all goes well and a hundred years if it doesn't. You will have to reckon with the latter possibility. If all goes well, we shall be able to talk about it for a long time, so why should I attempt to write much now, since it comes hard to me? If things turn out badly, words won't do much good anyhow.

You know how I feel about you Augusta. We have never talked much about our feelings. I love you very much and you love me, so you shall know the truth. It is in this letter. The truth is the knowledge that this is the grimmest of struggles in a hopeless situation. Misery, hunger, cold, renunciation, doubt, despair and horrible death. I will say no more about it. I did not talk about it during my leave either, and there's nothing about it in my letters. When we were together (and I mean through our letters as well), we were man and wife, and the war, however necessary, was an ugly accompaniment to our lives. But the truth is also knowledge that I wrote above is no complaint or lament but a statement of objective fact.

I cannot deny my share of personal guilt in all this. But it is a ratio of 1 to 70 millions. The ratio is small; still, it is there. I wouldn't think of evading my responsibility; I tell myself that, by giving my life, I have paid my debt. One cannot argue about questions of honor.

Augusta, in the hour in which you must be strong, you will feel this also. Don't be bitter and do not suffer too much from my absence. I am not cowardly, only sad that I cannot give greater proof of my courage than to die for this useless, not to say criminal cause. you know the family motto of the von H--'s: "Guilt recognized is guilt expiated."

Don't forget me too quickly.

Are The "Last Letters From Stalingrad" Forgeries?

At Christmastime I like to revisit the Last Letters From Stalingrad. I did this last year. In a sense, I'm carrying on a Madison radio tradition begun in the late 1960s by George Vukelich.  I wrote about that here and even put an audio recording on YouTube beginning here.  You can read some of the letters I did last year here: link

Doubts about the authenticity of the letters are scattered around the Internet. Amazon reviews of the book here touch on the controversy (note also how pricey the out-of-print book is too). The German language link at Wikipedia link has much more on the topic than the English one. I've translated the relevant portion concerning authenticity:

Historians and media professionals first began doubting the authenticity of the Last Letters from Stalingrad in the 1960s. They claimed that they were either manipulated by a sole agent or were even outright faked. Initially, the evidence for this was a certain uniformity of style. Later, more and more comparisons were made to other letters found in Volgograd, in the Army Post Archives at the Museum for Communication in Berlin, or those collected from opened Russian archives and indexed as War Letters from Stalingrad.

Further:

The legal philosopher, jurist and Hegel-scholar Wilhelm Raimund Beyer, who himself participated in the Battle of Stalingrad, vehemently questioned the authenticity of the Last Letters from Stalingrad in one of his last publications. He spoke of 'great concerns...against the volume.' In this book, many things are true but probably not all. In addition to a 'uniform style,' Beyers also considered topics dealt with in the letters to be more than questionable. He considered the whole project an imitation of the book War Letters of German Students (1915). Also, the facts and figures and certain confessional outpourings of the letters did not coincide with his own experiences.

Despite all the doubts about their authenticity, Last Letters From Stalingrad ultimately remains controversial, especially whether and to what extent the letters, first published in 1950, are edited, manipulated or falsified.

I'm not very good at spotting "uniformity of style" (If I were I'd be dead sure about sock puppet identities amongst Althouse comments). I've read the letters several times and I don't really see that. However, having read and transcribed my own father's wartime letters home, I am struck by the near perfect grammar and similar punctuation of these letters -- all from different authors! I ascribe some of that to there having been a sole translator. Anyone who's ever done any serious German to English translation knows that a fair amount of syntactical rearrangement is involved. A sole translator might have recurring idiosyncratic tics. Perhaps the similarities are more evident in the German language edition (which I don't have but would like to own).

In my opinion, the best reason to doubt the authenticity of the letters is the lack of supporting original letters or transcripts. Allegedly, the original seven sacks of mail were ordered destroyed by the Nazis. But something survived the war to be transcribed and published in 1950. Where is this now? If the letters themselves did not survive the war then where are the original transcripts used to compile the collection? There is a chain of custody problem here regarding the extant evidence. Still, no one yet has proven that they are fake.

For me, the best reason to believe that the letters are real is just their extreme poignancy and their universal appeal: i.e., their effect--a few of them can still move me to tears, and this is certainly enhanced by authenticity. They just make life make more sense. Much like faith. 

Last Letters From Stalingrad: Special Audio Edition

The Battle of Stalingrad has been called "the worst battle of the worst war in human history." In early 1943, around 270,000 German 6th Army soldiers--surrounded by the Red Army--were either annihilated or imprisoned. Of those men, only around 5,000 ever returned home to Germany. 

Last Letters From Stalingrad, first published as Letzte Briefe aus Stalingrad in 1950 in West Germany, was purportedly written by German soldiers who knew they were doomed and could write to their families just once more. The thin anthology became an international bestseller, and an English translation appeared in 1962.

Each year around Christmastime in the 1960's, a local Madison radio personality nicknamed "Papa Hambone" would read selected letters live on the air. Years later, I happened to catch one of George "Papa Hambone" Vukelich's last times ever reading of the letters in 1988 (he passed away a few short years later).  I don't recall which station I recorded this from but it was most likely WORT-FM.  The late Erwin Knoll, host of the show "Second Opinion," was a Madison legend too, having been the long-time editor of the magazine "The Progressive" and having been named on Richard Nixon's enemies list.

Here I successfully converted an audio cassette tape recording made back 1988 into my first ever YouTube video.  I had to split the tape into three parts to conform to Google's 10 minute limit. I made the original analog-to-digital conversion using "Sound Studio," first making an "aiff" file and then converting that to an mp4 file using iTunes. I apologize in advance for the poor sound quality- I tried to filter it a bit, but had I known I would be converting this 20 years after the fact I would have taken better care all along.

The total listening time is about 30 minutes.  George Vukelich gives a great introduction and historical background for the letters and then goes on to read four of his favorites.  I hope that his voice and spirit can live "on the air" by my posting them into the ether.

Enjoy!

Last Letters From Stalingrad Part 1 (background)

Part 2 (letters begin)

Part 3 (letters continue)  <--- The best one but has the fewest views

______________________

IMO, there are three further levels of interesting discussion belonging to these letters:

(1) The extreme poignancy of some of the letters.

(2) The charge that the letters were forgeries and what possible motives would exist for or against such charges.

(3) The extent to which the left used these letters, year after year, to bolster the anti-Vietnam war movement, especially in Madison.