William L. Laurence
William Leonard Laurence | |
---|---|
Born | Leib Wolf Siew March 7, 1888 Salantai, Lithuania, Russian Empire |
Died | March 19, 1977 Mallorca, Spain | (aged 89)
Nationality | Russian |
Other names | "Atomic Bill" |
Citizenship | United States (naturalized 1913) |
Education | Boston University |
Employer | The New York Times |
Known for | Reporting on the Atomic Age |
William Leonard Laurence (March 7, 1888 – March 19, 1977) was a
Early life and career
Laurence was born Leib Wolf Siew in
Although he attended Harvard University (1908–1911; 1914–1915) and allegedly completed all coursework for an undergraduate degree in philosophy, Laurence "struggled academically and financially" throughout his studies; according to biographer Vincent Kiernan, his institutional records contained "multiple complaints that he failed to repay loans from the university and individuals," while "holds on his account repeatedly interrupted his studies." Following a September 1915 skirmish with roommate Benjamin Stolberg, Laurence was found guilty of assault and battery before being "released without having to spend any time in jail."[3] A subsequent May 1917 graduation attempt was thwarted due to another block on his account from residual debt. (Laurence maintained in a later Columbia University oral history that his degree was not conferred due to his debt and a personality conflict with the dean of Harvard College.)
Following additional studies at the
He became a naturalized
Eschewing a legal career, he began working as a journalist for the New York World in 1926. In 1930, he joined The New York Times and specialized when possible in reporting scientific issues. He married Florence Davidow in 1931.
In 1934, Laurence co-founded the National Association of Science Writers, and in 1936, he covered the Harvard Tercenary Conference of Arts and Sciences; he and four other science reporters shared the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Reporting for that work.[6]
"Atomic Bill"
On May 5, 1940, Laurence published a front-page exclusive in the New York Times on successful attempts in isolating uranium-235 which were reported in Physical Review, and outlined many (somewhat hyperbolic) claims about the possible future of nuclear power.[7] He had assembled it in part out of his own fear that Nazi Germany was attempting to develop atomic energy, and had hoped the article would galvanize a U.S. effort.
Though his article had no effect on the U.S. bomb program, it was passed to the Soviet mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky by his son, George Vernadsky, a professor of history at Yale University, and motivated Vernadsky to urge Soviet authorities to embark on their own atomic program, and established one of the first commissions to formulate "a plan of measures which it would be necessary to realize in connection with the possibility of using intraatomic energy". A Soviet atomic bomb project got started c. 1942; a full-scale Soviet atomic energy program began after the war.[8]
On September 7, 1940, The Saturday Evening Post ran an article by Laurence on atomic fission, "The Atom Gives Up". In 1943, government officials asked librarians nationwide to withdraw the issue.[9]
In 1945, Major General Leslie Groves approached Jack Lockhart, Assistant Director of The Censorship Office, to serve as press release writer and official historian of the Manhattan Project. Lockhart turned the role down and instead recommended Laurence.[10] In the spring of 1945, Groves met with Laurence, then aged 57, and later summoned him to the secret Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico by Groves to serve as the official historian[11] of the Manhattan Project.
In this capacity he was also the author of many of the first official
US military encouraged the journalist William L. Laurence of The New York Times to write articles dismissing the reports of radiation sickness as part of Japanese efforts to undermine American morale. Laurence, who was also being paid by the US War Department, wrote the articles the US military wanted even though he was aware of the effects of radiation after observing the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, and its effect on local residents and livestock.[citation needed]
For his 1945 coverage of the atomic bomb, beginning with the eyewitness account from Nagasaki, he won a second Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1946.[6] At the office of the Times he was thereafter referred to as "Atomic Bill", to differentiate him from William H. Lawrence, a political reporter at the newspaper.
In his autobiography, Richard Feynman, who initially showed Laurence around the Los Alamos site, mentioned Laurence standing next to him during the Trinity test. Feynman stated, "I had been the one who was supposed to have taken him around. Then it was found that it was too technical for him, and so later H.D. Smyth came and I showed him around."[13] Nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein has called Laurence "part huckster, part journalist, all wild card ... improbable in every way, a real-life character with more strangeness than would seem tolerable in pure fiction."[14]
In 1946, he published an account of the Trinity test as Dawn Over Zero, which went through at least two revisions. He continued to work at the Times through the 1940s and into the 1950s, and published a book on defense against nuclear war in 1950. In 1951, his book The Hell Bomb warned about the use of a cobalt bomb – a form of hydrogen bomb (still an untested device at the time he wrote it) engineered to produce a maximum amount of nuclear fallout.
In 1956, he was present at the testing of a
He received honorary doctorates from
Laurence is one of the first commentators to have compared the atomic bomb to a monster, which helped to create a cultural trope that may have influenced such films as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Godzilla:[15] "It kept struggling in an elemental fury, like a creature in act of breaking the bonds that held it down" and "a monstrous prehistoric creature."[16]
Criticisms
In 2021, the historian Alex Wellerstein asserted that Laurence was "willingly complicit in the government’s propaganda project", referring to Laurence's collaboration with the United States Department of War to produce articles on the atomic bomb, its production and effects.[17]
Death
Laurence died in 1977 in
Bibliography
- Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb, New York: Knopf, 1946.
- We Are Not Helpless: How We Can Defend Ourselves against Atomic Weapons, New York, 1950.
- The Hell Bomb, New York: Knopf, 1951.
- Men and Atoms: The Discovery, the Uses, and the Future of Atomic Energy, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
See also
References
- ^ a b "William Laurence, Ex-Science Writer For The Times, Dies". New York Times. March 19, 1977. Retrieved May 26, 2008.
- ^ Goodman, Amy; Goodman, David (August 5, 2005). "The Hiroshima cover-up". baltimoresun.com. Archived from the original on September 23, 2020. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
- ISBN 9781501766015.
- ^ a b "Marquis Biographies Online".
- ISBN 9781501766015.
- ^ a b "Reporting". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 2, 2013.
- ^ "Vast Power Source In Atomic Energy Opened by Science; Report on New Source of Power". New York Times. May 5, 1940. Retrieved February 17, 2009.
- ^ On this incident, see David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994): 59–60.
- ISBN 0-8078-2598-0.
- ^ Silvera, Ian. "Oppenheimer, Atomic Bill and the Explosive Birth of Science Journalism". www.news-future.com. Retrieved May 26, 2023.
- ISBN 978-1-59373-005-5.
- ^ According to this source, "[Laurence] had the unique distinction of riding in the bomber that carried out the Nagasaki mission." See Operation Crossroads: The Official Pictorial Record, the Office of the Historian Joint Task Force One (New York: Wm. H. Wise & Co., 1946): 172.
- ^ Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (W.W. Norton and company, New York, 1997. p. 135)
- ^ Wolverton, Mark (August 9, 2017). "'Atomic Bill' and the Birth of the Bomb". Undark Magazine.
- ^ Hendershot, Cyndy (July 1998). "Darwin and the Atom : Evolution/Devolution Fantasies in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Them !, and The Incredible Shrinking Man". Science Fiction Studies. Greencastle (Indiana): SF-TH Inc: 320.
- ^ Laurence, William L. (1947). Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb. Pickle Partners Publishing. p. 238.text at Google Books
- ^ Broad, William J. (August 9, 2021). "How a Star Times Reporter Got Paid by Government Agencies He Covered". The New York Times.
Sources
- Keever, Beverly Deepe. News Zero: the New York Times and the Bomb. Common Courage Press, 2004. ISBN 1-56751-282-8
- Weart, Spencer. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
External links
- Annotated Bibliography for William L. Laurence from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Archived October 24, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
- Bio of Laurence at NuclearFiles.org
- "Hiroshima Cover-up: Stripping the War Department's Times man of His Pulitzer" – from Democracy Now!, August 5, 2005 (video, audio, and print transcript)
- From the Archives - The New York Times: a collection of 11 nuclear articles by William L. Laurence
- William Leonard Laurence at Library of Congress, with 18 library catalog records