- Email: [email protected]
A letter from Alvin Weinberg
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com annals of
NUCLEAR ENERGY Annals of Nuclear Energy 35 (2008) 552–554 www.elsevier.com/locate/anucene
Technical Note
A letter from Alvin Weinberg q ‘‘The development of nuclear reactor theory in the Montreal Laboratory of the National Research Council of Canada (Division of Atomic Energy) 1943–1946’’ [Progress in Nuclear Energy 36 (3) 2000, 239–322] M.M.R. Williams
*
2A Lytchgate Close, South Croydon, Surrey CR2 0DX, UK Available online 1 October 2007
Abstract In Canada, during the autumn of 1942, a group of physicists, chemists and engineers were assembled to work on what was to become the Canadian atomic energy project. The base for this work was Montreal. This paper concentrates on the contributions of a sub-group of those scientists, namely those working on the development of nuclear reactor theory. The members of that group comprised an international mix of Canadians, Britons and Americans. A few already had international reputations as theoretical physicists, but the majority were young men and women, generally under the age of 30, who were very talented but not yet famous. They worked under conditions of the utmost secrecy, initially with little help from the United States, and developed virtually from first principles most of the important aspects of modern reactor theory. The results of their work were issued as Canadian National Research Council reports with the prefix MT (Montreal Theory), and between 1943 and 1946 about 80 such reports were written. The theory described therein was fundamental to the later design and construction of the Canadian NRX reactor, which was a very successful research tool. Soon after the end of World War II, a few of the MT reports were written up and published in either the Physical Review or the Canadian Journal of Research. However, more than 80% of the work was not published and therefore did not receive the formal recognition that it deserved. A few of the reports that went unpublished were so important that one wonders why they never appeared in the learned journals. To be sure, the work they contained was certainly used world-wide and the reports cited. However, human nature being what it is, after some years the original sources were forgotten and only the published papers which cited them were quoted. After a while those classic, early MT reports seem to have faded from memory. Thus it was that, when I recently tried to find one of them to check on a particular matter (in fact it was a paper by George Volkoff on the Wiener–Hopf technique) I found extreme difficulty in locating it. The work presented here describes the problems I met in tracking down, not only the Volkoff paper, but many of the others too. It was this difficulty which persuaded me that the MT reports should, after nearly 60 years, receive their due recognition. I am doing that by reprinting here the abstracts of all of the relevant reports, with some personal comments regarding their importance or historical value. In addition, where possible, I am publishing short biographies of the major players in Montreal during the period 1943–1946, thereby demonstrating how those young people’s careers developed in the post-war years. Many went on to receive high scientific honours and academic prestige. In order to put the articles in context, I have also reproduced the abstracts of some British Ministry of Supply reports which were written in the early part of the war (1940–1942), and which are relevant because several of the British scientists involved subsequently found themselves in Montreal. To give some background to the early Canadian work, I have reprinted part of an article by George Laurence (First Head of the Canadian Atomic Energy Control Board) who was an early contributor to research in neutron chain reactors, and whose enthusiasm and talent undoubtedly contributed to the decision to start the atomic energy project in Canada. Over the next few q As a postscript to the paper on the history of nuclear energy in Canada during the second world war, I present a letter from Dr. Alvin Weinberg with his comments and some historical notes on reactor theory. * Tel.: +44 2086804450; fax: +44 2086805354. E-mail address: [email protected]
0306-4549/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.anucene.2007.07.020
M.M.R. Williams / Annals of Nuclear Energy 35 (2008) 552–554
553
years, this journal or its companion, Annals of Nuclear Energy, will publish a selection of the more important MT reports so that they will be readily accessible to scholars and to practising nuclear engineers. One of these reports, written in 1944 by Boris Davison and which is of seminal value, is reproduced in this issue with kind permission of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
First letter to Dr. Weinberg from M.M.R.W. 10th October 1999 Dr. Alvin Weinberg Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge TN 37830, USA Dear Dr. Weinberg, My name is M.M.R. Williams and we last met in 1989 when you gave the R.K. Osborne memorial lecture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and I was a member of the Faculty of the Nuclear Engineering Department. My reason for writing to you now is to ask for your recollections on the work done by the group of Canadian, US and British scientists who worked at Montreal during the period 1943–1950. Such names as George Volkoff, Boris Davison, George Placzek, E.D. Courant, P.R. Wallace, C. Mark and J. LeCaine as well as Robert Marshak, Maurice Pryce and F.T. Adler are typical of that group. I have always greatly admired the work done by that group whose work was issued in Canadian reports under the prefix MT. I enclose a listing to remind you of the contributions. For this reason I decided to write an appreciation, a sort of personal/technical history of that group, and attempted to get hold of the reports. I had great trouble doing this as the accompanying account will tell you. However, I am almost there. But I do need to know something of the background to that Canadian group at Montreal, in particular why was the group set up and what was its relationship with the Manhattan project. Were there regular working party meetings, was the traffic twoway? Unfortunately, many of the major players are dead, although I have had some useful personal comments from E.D. Courant, who I believe is the son of Richard Courant. I also know that George Volkoff is still alive and living in Vancouver, but he is rather frail and my Canadian friends tell me he is not up to interviews. Maurice Pryce is still with us and I have recently written to him about this matter, but as yet have received no reply. The others mentioned above I believe have regrettably passed on. The history that I intend to publish will be rather unusual because in addition to the main text, I will be reprinting a selection of the MT reports (with discussion) that were not published in the learned journals and so did not get wide dissemination. As you may know, I am the Editor of Annals of Nuclear Energy and as Editor I feel that one of my duties is to ensure that the origins of our subject are not lost to posterity. Thus I will publish, perhaps over a period of several years, those seminal papers which seem to have ‘got lost’. The same is true of course with many of the old Manhattan project reports; why even such classics as ‘The mathematical develop-
ment of the endpoint method’, AECD 2056 (LADC 76) by Frankel and Goldberg (1945) and ‘The effect of the temperature of the moderator on the velocity distribution of neutrons.’ AECD 2275 by Wigner and Wilkins (1944) take some finding. I suppose the complete set of Manhattan project reports are archived somewhere but they are certainly not accessible to the casual browser. Well, I apologise for what must seem incoherent rambling, but it is a measure of my concern that our nuclear heritage is being lost. This feeling will be reinforced if you read my accompany article which describes the destruction of nuclear repository libraries in the UK. I do hope you can help me with any views or recollections on the matter raised in the earlier part of this letter. Yours sincerely M.M.R. Williams Emeritus Professor of Nuclear Engineering, University of London, UK. Second letter to Dr. Weinberg from M.M.R.W. 31st July 2000 Dr. Alvin Weinberg 111 Moylan Lane Oak Ridge TN 37380 USA Dear Dr. Weinberg, I am enclosing a reprint of some work that I think may interest you. In fact while writing it I tried to contact you but the letter came back after nearly six months classified as ‘not known’. Rather curious as you were probably the best known Director that Oak Ridge ever had. However, by a circuitous route involving Larry Dresner I was able to get your present address. I am enclosing the letter I originally sent just to set the scene. I was particularly eager to get your comments because you were the US liaison officer in Montreal and must therefore have had some interesting ‘inside’ knowledge. Whilst it is too late to include that in the paper, I would certainly be very interested in your reaction to my ‘history’. In writing the paper, I was very fortunate in contacting some of the major players involved in the Montreal project. Phil Wallace and Ernest Courant were particularly helpful. Regrettably George Volkoff and Maurice Pryce both had strokes a couple of years ago and were unable to help me. George Volkoff died only a few months ago. I was also fortunate in contacting Jeanne LeCaine’s family. Whilst she was incapacitated, her husband Ted Agnew provided some very interesting background information. Jeanne LeCaine died only last month.
554
M.M.R. Williams / Annals of Nuclear Energy 35 (2008) 552–554
Well all these deaths are a bit depressing, yet I hope I have kept alive something of the spirit and talent of those years. Best wishes
M.M.R. Williams Emeritus Professor of Nuclear Engineering, University of London, UK.
NUCLEAR ENERGY Annals of Nuclear Energy 35 (2008) 552–554 www.elsevier.com/locate/anucene
Technical Note
A letter from Alvin Weinberg q ‘‘The development of nuclear reactor theory in the Montreal Laboratory of the National Research Council of Canada (Division of Atomic Energy) 1943–1946’’ [Progress in Nuclear Energy 36 (3) 2000, 239–322] M.M.R. Williams
*
2A Lytchgate Close, South Croydon, Surrey CR2 0DX, UK Available online 1 October 2007
Abstract In Canada, during the autumn of 1942, a group of physicists, chemists and engineers were assembled to work on what was to become the Canadian atomic energy project. The base for this work was Montreal. This paper concentrates on the contributions of a sub-group of those scientists, namely those working on the development of nuclear reactor theory. The members of that group comprised an international mix of Canadians, Britons and Americans. A few already had international reputations as theoretical physicists, but the majority were young men and women, generally under the age of 30, who were very talented but not yet famous. They worked under conditions of the utmost secrecy, initially with little help from the United States, and developed virtually from first principles most of the important aspects of modern reactor theory. The results of their work were issued as Canadian National Research Council reports with the prefix MT (Montreal Theory), and between 1943 and 1946 about 80 such reports were written. The theory described therein was fundamental to the later design and construction of the Canadian NRX reactor, which was a very successful research tool. Soon after the end of World War II, a few of the MT reports were written up and published in either the Physical Review or the Canadian Journal of Research. However, more than 80% of the work was not published and therefore did not receive the formal recognition that it deserved. A few of the reports that went unpublished were so important that one wonders why they never appeared in the learned journals. To be sure, the work they contained was certainly used world-wide and the reports cited. However, human nature being what it is, after some years the original sources were forgotten and only the published papers which cited them were quoted. After a while those classic, early MT reports seem to have faded from memory. Thus it was that, when I recently tried to find one of them to check on a particular matter (in fact it was a paper by George Volkoff on the Wiener–Hopf technique) I found extreme difficulty in locating it. The work presented here describes the problems I met in tracking down, not only the Volkoff paper, but many of the others too. It was this difficulty which persuaded me that the MT reports should, after nearly 60 years, receive their due recognition. I am doing that by reprinting here the abstracts of all of the relevant reports, with some personal comments regarding their importance or historical value. In addition, where possible, I am publishing short biographies of the major players in Montreal during the period 1943–1946, thereby demonstrating how those young people’s careers developed in the post-war years. Many went on to receive high scientific honours and academic prestige. In order to put the articles in context, I have also reproduced the abstracts of some British Ministry of Supply reports which were written in the early part of the war (1940–1942), and which are relevant because several of the British scientists involved subsequently found themselves in Montreal. To give some background to the early Canadian work, I have reprinted part of an article by George Laurence (First Head of the Canadian Atomic Energy Control Board) who was an early contributor to research in neutron chain reactors, and whose enthusiasm and talent undoubtedly contributed to the decision to start the atomic energy project in Canada. Over the next few q As a postscript to the paper on the history of nuclear energy in Canada during the second world war, I present a letter from Dr. Alvin Weinberg with his comments and some historical notes on reactor theory. * Tel.: +44 2086804450; fax: +44 2086805354. E-mail address: [email protected]
0306-4549/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.anucene.2007.07.020
M.M.R. Williams / Annals of Nuclear Energy 35 (2008) 552–554
553
years, this journal or its companion, Annals of Nuclear Energy, will publish a selection of the more important MT reports so that they will be readily accessible to scholars and to practising nuclear engineers. One of these reports, written in 1944 by Boris Davison and which is of seminal value, is reproduced in this issue with kind permission of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
First letter to Dr. Weinberg from M.M.R.W. 10th October 1999 Dr. Alvin Weinberg Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge TN 37830, USA Dear Dr. Weinberg, My name is M.M.R. Williams and we last met in 1989 when you gave the R.K. Osborne memorial lecture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and I was a member of the Faculty of the Nuclear Engineering Department. My reason for writing to you now is to ask for your recollections on the work done by the group of Canadian, US and British scientists who worked at Montreal during the period 1943–1950. Such names as George Volkoff, Boris Davison, George Placzek, E.D. Courant, P.R. Wallace, C. Mark and J. LeCaine as well as Robert Marshak, Maurice Pryce and F.T. Adler are typical of that group. I have always greatly admired the work done by that group whose work was issued in Canadian reports under the prefix MT. I enclose a listing to remind you of the contributions. For this reason I decided to write an appreciation, a sort of personal/technical history of that group, and attempted to get hold of the reports. I had great trouble doing this as the accompanying account will tell you. However, I am almost there. But I do need to know something of the background to that Canadian group at Montreal, in particular why was the group set up and what was its relationship with the Manhattan project. Were there regular working party meetings, was the traffic twoway? Unfortunately, many of the major players are dead, although I have had some useful personal comments from E.D. Courant, who I believe is the son of Richard Courant. I also know that George Volkoff is still alive and living in Vancouver, but he is rather frail and my Canadian friends tell me he is not up to interviews. Maurice Pryce is still with us and I have recently written to him about this matter, but as yet have received no reply. The others mentioned above I believe have regrettably passed on. The history that I intend to publish will be rather unusual because in addition to the main text, I will be reprinting a selection of the MT reports (with discussion) that were not published in the learned journals and so did not get wide dissemination. As you may know, I am the Editor of Annals of Nuclear Energy and as Editor I feel that one of my duties is to ensure that the origins of our subject are not lost to posterity. Thus I will publish, perhaps over a period of several years, those seminal papers which seem to have ‘got lost’. The same is true of course with many of the old Manhattan project reports; why even such classics as ‘The mathematical develop-
ment of the endpoint method’, AECD 2056 (LADC 76) by Frankel and Goldberg (1945) and ‘The effect of the temperature of the moderator on the velocity distribution of neutrons.’ AECD 2275 by Wigner and Wilkins (1944) take some finding. I suppose the complete set of Manhattan project reports are archived somewhere but they are certainly not accessible to the casual browser. Well, I apologise for what must seem incoherent rambling, but it is a measure of my concern that our nuclear heritage is being lost. This feeling will be reinforced if you read my accompany article which describes the destruction of nuclear repository libraries in the UK. I do hope you can help me with any views or recollections on the matter raised in the earlier part of this letter. Yours sincerely M.M.R. Williams Emeritus Professor of Nuclear Engineering, University of London, UK. Second letter to Dr. Weinberg from M.M.R.W. 31st July 2000 Dr. Alvin Weinberg 111 Moylan Lane Oak Ridge TN 37380 USA Dear Dr. Weinberg, I am enclosing a reprint of some work that I think may interest you. In fact while writing it I tried to contact you but the letter came back after nearly six months classified as ‘not known’. Rather curious as you were probably the best known Director that Oak Ridge ever had. However, by a circuitous route involving Larry Dresner I was able to get your present address. I am enclosing the letter I originally sent just to set the scene. I was particularly eager to get your comments because you were the US liaison officer in Montreal and must therefore have had some interesting ‘inside’ knowledge. Whilst it is too late to include that in the paper, I would certainly be very interested in your reaction to my ‘history’. In writing the paper, I was very fortunate in contacting some of the major players involved in the Montreal project. Phil Wallace and Ernest Courant were particularly helpful. Regrettably George Volkoff and Maurice Pryce both had strokes a couple of years ago and were unable to help me. George Volkoff died only a few months ago. I was also fortunate in contacting Jeanne LeCaine’s family. Whilst she was incapacitated, her husband Ted Agnew provided some very interesting background information. Jeanne LeCaine died only last month.
554
M.M.R. Williams / Annals of Nuclear Energy 35 (2008) 552–554
Well all these deaths are a bit depressing, yet I hope I have kept alive something of the spirit and talent of those years. Best wishes
M.M.R. Williams Emeritus Professor of Nuclear Engineering, University of London, UK.