Profiles in Science for Science Librarians: “Now We Are All Sons of Bitches!”: The Atomic Life of Kenneth Bainbridge

Abstract

Kenneth Bainbridge was one of numerous physicists working from 1943 to 1945 on the creation of the atomic bombs for the Manhattan Project. However, unlike the many other physicists at Los Alamos, New Mexico, who worked on their atomic theories on paper, Bainbridge was an engineer, and he was placed in charge of the actual “Trinity” test—to make the bomb into reality. Much of the success of launching the world into the atomic age was his. However, today he is almost completely forgotten. This article is a reintroduction of the many accomplishments of this man and of his seven-word expletive.

KEYWORDS:

• Kenneth Bainbridge
• nuclear physics
• atomic bomb
• Trinity
• Manhattan Project
• mass spectrography

Notes

1. Many books on the Manhattan Project barely record Kenneth Bainbridge’s accomplishments. Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Touchstone Books, 1986) mentions him on 46 out of 785 pages; Bruce Cameron Reed’s The History and Science of the Manhattan Project (Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2014) lists him on 12 out of 451 pages; and James P. Delgado’s Nuclear Dawn: The Atomic Bomb from the Manhattan Project to the Cold War (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2009) 6 out of 186 pages. Remembering the Manhattan Project (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2004) and The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Worlds of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historian (New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2009), both volumes edited by Cynthia C. Kelly, mention Bainbridge on zero out of 180 pages and two out of 459 pages respectively. Biographies on J. Robert Oppenheimer do not give much credit to Bainbridge either. In Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), Bainbridge appears on three out of 591 pages, and Ray Monk’s Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center (New York: Doubleday, 2012) has Bainbridge on six out of 695 pages. The film documentary by John Else, The Day After Trinity: Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb (Chatsworth, CA: Image Entertainment, 2002) has no appearance, or mention, of Bainbridge. Perhaps the most egregious near-absence from the historical record is in Director of the Manhattan Project Leslie R. Groves’ book Now It Can Be Told: the Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper and Row, 1962). Kenneth Bainbridge’s participation is recorded on two out of 444 pages, and in two footnotes.

2. A search on June 1, 2014, in OCLC reveals no substantial biographies on Kenneth Bainbridge. The only listings for Kenneth Bainbridge is Robert V. Pound and Norman Ramsey’s Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge: July 27, 1904–July 14, 1996 (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), described as having between 19 and 34 pages; and Kenneth Bainbridge and Joan Safford’s Reminiscences of Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge: Oral History, described as a transcript of 150 leaves of miscellaneous papers relating to oral history and dated 1960.

3. For the purposes of this article, the terms mass spectrograph and mass spectrometer will be used interchangeably. The Chamber Dictionary of Science and Technology, edited by John Lackie (Edinburgh, UK: Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2007) defines mass spectrograph as “A vacuum system in which positive rays of various charged atoms are deflected through electrical and magnetic fields so as to indicate, in order, the charge-to-mass rations on a photographic plate, thus measuring the atomic masses of isotopes with precision. System used for the first separation for analysis and early use of the isotopes of uranium” (741); and mass spectrometer as “A mass spectrograph in which the charged particles are detected electrically instead of photographically” (741).