Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Who Put the Manhattan in the Manhattan Project?

Speaking of Columbia, check out this article in the Times on the Manhattan history of the Manhattan Project. Quite a bit of it was in fact done downstairs from where the string theory workshop was held, in the basement of Pupin Hall. To be honest, I still don't know if those lower floors are open again; when I was a postdoc there in the late 90's everyone told me they were still "hot" (i.e. activated) and sealed off from normal access. Want. To. Know. More.

First off: that's a huge room and cyclotron. Is that really in Pupin? I'd be surprised...in fact this looks nothing like this photo I found on the Columbia website of I.I. Rabi frying hotdogs on the Pupin cyclotron. Time to write the NY Times another email...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There is a picture case on a wall in the third floor hallway of Pupin that is a tribute to Robert Serber. Would you happen to know who created it? I checked with the librarians in the physics library, but nobody even knew it was there. If you have any information, or if you would like to hear the full story, email me at this address. Thank you