- Person
- Isidor Isaac Rabi
- Lived
- 1898–1988
- Field
- Physics
- From
- Polish-born American
The story
Isidor Isaac Rabi knew the power of nuclear weapons at first hand. He had served as a consultant to the Manhattan Project, and in July 1945 he watched the Trinity test, the first atomic explosion, through welding goggles. In December 1946 he was appointed to the General Advisory Committee of the new Atomic Energy Commission, a nine-member panel created to advise on scientific and technical matters.
In August 1949 the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, and the White House announced it that September. Some American officials and scientists pressed for a crash programme to build a far more powerful weapon, the hydrogen or "super" bomb. The question went to the committee, which met in Washington on 29 and 30 October 1949 under the chairmanship of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
No member of the committee was willing to endorse an all-out effort. The majority report warned that the weapon's use would involve a decision to slaughter vast numbers of civilians. Rabi went further than most of his colleagues. Together with Enrico Fermi he wrote a separate annex arguing that the bomb should be opposed on moral as well as technical grounds. The two physicists wrote that because there was no limit to the destructiveness of such a weapon, its very existence was a danger to humanity as a whole, and they called it necessarily an evil thing. They urged the President to declare that developing it was wrong on fundamental ethical principles and to invite other nations to join a solemn pledge not to build such weapons.
President Harry S. Truman overruled the committee in January 1950 and ordered development to proceed. Rabi later said he never forgave Truman for giving in to the pressure. He kept speaking out. He succeeded Oppenheimer as chairman of the committee from 1952 to 1956, and at the 1954 security hearing that stripped Oppenheimer of his clearance, no witness defended his friend more forcefully. The Atomic Heritage Foundation notes that Rabi also worked with Oppenheimer to support the Baruch Plan for international control of atomic energy.
The Fermi-Rabi annex remains one of the clearest statements by scientists of their responsibility to weigh the moral consequences of the weapons they help to create.
Why it matters
Rabi's stand helped establish the principle that scientists have a responsibility to weigh the moral consequences of the weapons they create.
About Isidor Isaac Rabi
Galician-born physicist who discovered nuclear magnetic resonance in molecular beams, won the 1944 Nobel Prize, and helped found Brookhaven and CERN, the root of today’s MRI and atomic clocks.
More about Isidor Isaac Rabi
- Rabi helped found Brookhaven National LaboratoryIsidor Isaac Rabi and Norman Ramsey rallied nine universities to found Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, established in 1947.
- Rabi's team found the deuteron is not roundPrecise measurements by Isidor Isaac Rabi's group in the late 1930s showed the deuteron has an electric quadrupole moment, a key clue to the nuclear force.
- Rabi helped create the President's science advisersAfter Sputnik in 1957, Isidor Isaac Rabi's advice to President Eisenhower helped create the President's Science Advisory Committee.
- I. I. Rabi discovered how to make atomic nuclei 'ring'In 1937 Isidor Isaac Rabi's Columbia team invented the molecular-beam magnetic resonance method, winning him the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Rabi led research on wartime microwave radarAt MIT's Radiation Laboratory during the Second World War, Isidor Isaac Rabi led research that pushed radar to sharper 3-centimetre wavelengths.
- I. I. Rabi planted the idea that became CERNAt a UNESCO meeting in Florence in June 1950, Isidor Isaac Rabi called for regional laboratories to rebuild European science; in 1952 European nations created CERN’s provisional council.
- I. I. Rabi proposed the atomic clock in 1945In a 1945 lecture Isidor Isaac Rabi proposed using the magnetic resonance of atoms to keep time; his colleagues soon built the first atomic clocks.
- Rabi's discovery is the root of the MRI scannerIsidor Isaac Rabi's magnetic resonance research led to MRI; in his final illness he was examined in a scanner descended from his own experiments.
Sources
- Isidor Isaac Rabi Wikipedia
- General Advisory Committee's Majority and Minority Reports on Building the H-Bomb Atomic Archive
- Isidor I. Rabi Atomic Heritage Foundation
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.