ABSTRACT
Physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific chief at Los Alamos, recruited Nolan and Hempelmann to build a general medical facility and monitor radioactive materials. General Leslie Groves, who ran the entire Manhattan Project including Los Alamos, brought in Warren as the Project’s chief medical officer. Trinity was a military success. The bomb was more powerful than expected, but also produced significant radiation and fallout as predicted; for instance, 20 roentgens were measured in one canyon 20 miles north of ground zero, far above what was then thought to be a safe level. The plutonium experiments, writes the author, were the most extreme example of how doctors were co-opted and made complicit with Trinity, radiation accidents, and radiation effects in Japan. The tension between these positions is expressed in his grandson’s comment about Nolan pondering whether he was a hero or a villain. Family members saw other signs of internal struggles.
