(From The Spinstah)

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence/ phrase.
4. Blog the next four sentences/ phrases together with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig your shelves for that very special or intellectual book.
6. Pass it forward to six friends.

In April 1943 a group of around thirty of us were gathered in this beautiful place so we could discuss how to embark on the most secret of all war projects. In the early phase of our work at Los Alamos there were many questions to be answered: Exactly how many neutrons are released with each fission of a uranium nucleus? What is the speed of these neutrons? How are the neutrons absorbed or scattered around when they penetrate different materials?

That’s from The Joy of Insight, the autobiography of Victor Weisskopf, who was second in command of the Theoretical Division of the Manhattan Project. I’m assisting in the processing of his collection at the MIT Archives. It’s been facinating, really. The book is in my work bag, hanging off the desk chair.

Though, if I were to quote my favorite passage from that book it would be this one:

He was a tall, rather heavily built man whose strong body, over-sized hands, and large skull made him look like the captain of a fishing fleet rather than a scientist. He had bushy eyebrows and a sharp, straight nose set in a long, broad face. His large head almost caused his death in 1943, when after fleeing from the Nazis he was transported from Sweden to London in a British warplane that flew very high to avoid antiaircraft fire. The helmet containing an intercom between him and the pilot was too small to fit his head, so he did not hear a warning to put on his oxygen mask. Luckily, the plane descended to a safer altitude so quickly that Bohr was not seriously affected.

That’s how Weisskopf introduces Niels Borh. It’s nice to know that in addition to being a brilliant physicist, Bohr had a giant head. Probably for to keep his huge brain.