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Volume 3, #2The Scientist January 23, 1989 UNIVERSITY BRIEFS Scientists Take To The Silver Screen When movie director Roland Joffé set out to chronicle the dawn of the Atomic Age, he sent out an unusual casting call. Rather than use actors to portray most of the Los Alamos physicists of the 1940s, he decided that only real scientists would do. So he and his crew passed around the word at several universities, and he soon recruited 50 scientists, engineers, and physician

The Scientist Staff


Volume 3, #2The Scientist January 23, 1989

UNIVERSITY BRIEFS

Scientists Take To The Silver Screen

When movie director Roland Joffé set out to chronicle the dawn of the Atomic Age, he sent out an unusual casting call. Rather than use actors to portray most of the Los Alamos physicists of the 1940s, he decided that only real scientists would do. So he and his crew passed around the word at several universities, and he soon recruited 50 scientists, engineers, and physicians. Actors have the leading roles - Paul Newman is Major General Leslie Groves and Dwight Schultz plays J.Robert Oppenheimer - but the real scientists figure prominently. Caltech professor of theoretical physics, David Politzer, for example, portrays physicist Robert Serber, Oppenheimer's young protegee.

The film, named "Fat Man and Little Boy" after the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is scheduled to be released this fall. But the experience...

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