'Rabi' and Alvarez': Tedious, Vain Portraits

Rabi: Scientist and Citizen. John S. Ridgen. Basic Books, New York, 1987. 352 pp. $21.95. Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist. Luis W. Alvarez. Basic Books, New York, 1987. 292 pp. $19.95. Tuesday is too nice a day to write reviews about scientific biographies if for no other reason than Tuesday follows Monday and Monday follows Sunday. Now on Sunday one takes a stroll through the grounds of the local conservatory, sits on a bench near the statue of Rimsky-Korsakov in Leningrad or outside the chapel at Princeton's Westminster Choir College and listens to the practicing students. But soon a fragment of a Bach two-part invention drifts from an open window to your ears and gently re minds you of the task at hand. You rise and walk on, hoping to shake the melody out of your head but the breeze carries it along after you from one bench to the next, around the corners and trees until, in exasperation, you capitulate; there is no escape. The fugue in this case is not by Bach; in fact it is the inadvertent creation of two composers, John Rigden and Luis Alvarez, and the voices that wind their way through this peculiar invention are entitled Rabi: Scientist and Citizen and Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist. Here we have portraits of two men, the first born in 1898 and the second in 1911, both who became physicists during "the golden age," both of whose careers were largely shaped by World War II, Los Alamos and the MIT Rad Lab, and both of whom won Nobel Prizes for their work in experimental particle physics. In studying these siblings we are led to contemplate a number of fundamental questions: Should one spend the summer reading scientific biographies? Should scientific biographies be written by scientists? Do editors still edit books or merely forward them to the printer for binding? Should Los Alamos memoirs be banned? Should the Nobel Prize be abolished or merely inflated? Should a reviewer review the book or the man? Rigden and his partner Rabi—a great experimentalist—must be applauded at least for attempting what is surely an impossible experiment: to write the first successful joint biography-autobiography. Rabi's rich life deserves to be writ ten—and already has been by Jeremy Bernstein in his New Yorker series some years back. Apart from Rabi's achievements in pure physics (the invention of the nuclear magnetic resonance technique), he was instrumental in developing radar at the MIT Had Lab during World War II, advised Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, helped found Brookhaven National Laboratory, inspired the creation of CERN, sat on the council that created NASA and was a subject of the Arthur Roberts' great Rad Lab songs. In short, one of the most in fluential physicists of the century. What we have here, alas, is a sterile hybrid. Rigden has infused the narrative with so many direct quotations from Chairman Rabi that one is left with the forlorn and never-to-be-granted wish that Rabi would have written the whole thing himself. The Rabi passages have life and punch and old-world wisdom ("Physics brought me nearer to God"), and sometimes a bit of sangfroid: "When someone approached me with an idea, I'd look at him coldly and say, 'How many Germans will it kill?' Our objective was to win the war." On the other hand, Rigden's interstitial material is functional, uncritical and consequently monotonous. I also would not be surprised to learn that the editor took the manuscript from the Sloan Foundation, under whose auspices both biographies were published, and tossed it onto the production line without a second glance. Three chapters, "The Resonance Method," "The Hydrogens" and "The Human Side of Physics," all concern the same set of molecular-beam experiments that Rabi's group at Columbia developed during the 1930s. A simple chronological plan would have served well here. As it stands, the same ground is trampled three times over, the experiments described again and again, but with sufficient variation that we are often left wondering whether this is a new wrinkle or a pressed wrinkle. And we are not even granted enlightenment at the end of the struggle: Victor Cohen may have walked home from the lab one day thinking, "I am the only one in the world who knows that the nuclear spin of sodium is 3/2," but I miss any explanation of why that number is important to know. Forgive me. Rabi's value for the proton's magnetic moment is, according to Rigden, still unexplained by theory. Such a profound mystery is deserving of at least one page of discussion, I should think. A paragraph? A sentence? A word? To all appearances these three chapters were written as separate essays and not integrated, a feel that pervades the entire book. Two short examples illume: After five pages of Roger Robb and the Oppenheimer hearings, Robb is reintroduced as the prosecuting attorney. If we are not aware of who Robb is by that time, we have been asleep for half the chapter. Even better: Rabi's snarl, "I never forgave Truman for buckling under pressure [and building the hydrogen bomb] . . . ," occurs verbatim at two locations in the text (separated by 37 pages) without any recognition that this venting of spleen has already taken place. Perhaps the editor was asleep. Rabi: Scientist and Citizen is, sadly, not a book; it is only the first draft of a book. Luis Alvarez, apart from his part in the development of bubble chambers, for which he won the Nobel Prize, also participated in the development of radar at the MIT Had Lab, led one of the detonation teams at Los Alamos, explored the pyramids with cosmic rays and is currently best known for his theory that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by the impact of a massive asteroid 65 million years ago. Certainly a fit subject for an autobiography and, in terms of coherence, Alvarez is indeed marginally more successful than his counterpart, his book having been written by a single author. Now, we must grant that the writing of an autobiography is an act of egotism and must therefore be willing to indulge the author half way. Three quarters? Ninety-nine percent? If there was ever a biography that tested the limits of indulgence, it is Alvarez, which might have been entitled Me. The author's intent is made fully trans parent from the opening pages in which he recounts, totally out of chronological order, his experiences on the observation plane that followed the first atomic bomb to Hiroshima. This prologue ends with the portentous words: "Flying the Hiroshima mission was certainly one of the most somber and impressive experiences of my life, but it was not my first adventure, nor would it be my last." The choice of the word "adventure" to describe Hiroshima is not accidental. Unfortunately. For Rabi, physics is to move you "closer to God." For Alvarez physics is adventures and Nobel Prizes. Indeed, the subject of the prize comes up so often that we cannot help but wonder whether Alvarez does physics for the sake of physics or for the sake of awards. He de scribes 1960 as a traumatic year: His daughter was diagnosed with cancer, an old friendship disintegrated and he did not win the Nobel Prize. Flow, oh bitter tears. Neither Rigden nor Alvarez, of course, can be held responsible for the choreography of the other, but reading the two books together produces the most peculiar sensation of contretemps. To Rigden and Rabi's credit, the contributions of Alvarez at the Had Lab and elsewhere are given their due. Alvarez does not even mention Rabi as the lab's associate director. Rigden strongly implies that Alvarez testified against Oppenheimer at the security hearings, while Alvarez manages a quick two-step around the subject. (Again the question of editorial dominions raises its ugly head.) It is thus best to read these books in different seasons; inconsistencies and obscurities will have pleasantly been forgotten and readers can concentrate on the more interesting sociological aspects of the stories, e.g. the freewheeling nature of prewar physics when an un known postdoc could turn up unannounced at the threshold of a major European research center and be handed an appointment. Other tidbits from both books are equally enlightening. However, these are relatively small morsels and since this is Tuesday, let me return to the subject of autobiographical egotism (a tautology). In thinking over the other egotists I have met through their literary endeavors, the names of Feynman, Dyson and Berlioz immediately spring to mind. Feyn an is not a great writer and can be as cantankerous as they come, but anyone who can roll over in his bed pondering whether to tell the Nobel Commission to shove it is the genuine article. Dyson undoubtedly thinks highly of himself (Disturbing the Universe is not the most modest title for an autobiography), yet he is as much of a writer as a scientist and he knows that one of the best tricks of the successful biographer is to reflect his subject off his fellows. It is a cheap trick and it works; Dyson is at the center of his Disturbing the Universe but the fact slips by unnoticed and his graceful prose raises the book to the level of a near masterpiece. For sheer egotism the personality of Hector Berlioz is unsurpassed; nevertheless, his Memoirs are one of the great books of the 19th century. He wins simply because he was an even greater writer than he was a composer and his criticisms, idiosyncrasies and misadventures read like The Three Musketeers. Alvarez, on the other hand, tells us that science and mathematics are "hierarchical" and that one of the saddest awakenings of any academic is the realization that some of his colleagues are much more talented than he. True. But with the conventional arrogance of the physicist, he fails to see the hierarchy of writing, while Berlioz dazzles, Feynman makes us laugh and Dyson forces us to reflect, Alvarez merely pounds us to sleep with the soporific hammer of leaden prose and unleavened vanity. I once suggested to Tullio ("Regge Pole") Regge, a great human being, that the Nobel Prize should be abolished. Regge replied no, that would only make those in existence more valuable. Better to inflate them—give out five, ten, a hundred a year until no one wanted them any more. I move that Regge's suggestion be adopted; it would deflate the number of scientific biographies and those thrown our way might ride the currents of literary merit rather than scientific medals. Rothman, a physicist, currently writes for Discover magazine. His next book is Science a la Mode to be published by Princeton University Press.

'Rabi' and Alvarez': Tedious, Vain Portraits

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