Thank you for this essay. It gives me a lot to think about. A poet friend turned me onto your daisy work after I began researching and writing about mutated flora collected near Three Mile Island. My first poetry collection explores my physicist grandfather’s involvement in the Manhattan project and subsequent nuclear technologies. I want to stay in the tension you describe -- acknowledging nuance, resisting a moral stance, contextualizing vs sensationalizing. But audiences don’t always want that complexity. It’s challenging. Anyway, thanks for sharing this reflection. It inspires me.
Thank you so much for your kind words and taking the time to read this! May I ask, what was your grandfather's name? Any chance he was friends with Richard Feynman? So fascinating to grow up with such a grandfather!
His name was Donald Mueller (badge H-11 in the security log). He certainly knew Feynman but I’m not sure how closely they worked together. So much of what he did is still classified! I know he worked on the implosion model (the trinity model) under Seth Nedermeyer and the explosives team (Kistiakowsky). He had a close connection with Hans Bethe over his career and idolized Niels Bohr. It’s a fascinating and terrifying part of our family history, for sure.
Not many. I do have a photocopy of a photo of a successful experiment. It's signed by my grandfather's team. Just looks like a mangled (exploded?) contraption on a track. It must have been meaningful to him, but none of us can really decipher it.
Ultrasound does not involve ionizing radiation and can be used to take images of living things repeatedly with no real risk--there's a theoretical risk from overheating, but doctors will regularly follow things with ultrasound they'd hesitate to get a CAT scan on.
I think to be a scientist you have to actually discover new knowledge and publish it in a journal. Since so much basic knowledge has already been found, it's hard for you to add any without really expensive equipment.
The arts, well, you know better than me I'd imagine. Still, from what I can tell you can use an old form if you want to. You could paint your porch in the style of a Renaissance painting, you just won't get shown at a New York gallery. But if you just want to make something beautiful, well, who cares?
I worked with a radiologist who used an x-ray machine built for treating cancer on my daisy seeds. He cranked up the machine to such a high level of radiation (far beyond normal use) that he quickly grew paranoid about the possibility that he could have broken the machine and would lose his head at work, but fortunately that was not the case!
To be sure, I have never claimed to be a scientist.
Thank you for this essay. It gives me a lot to think about. A poet friend turned me onto your daisy work after I began researching and writing about mutated flora collected near Three Mile Island. My first poetry collection explores my physicist grandfather’s involvement in the Manhattan project and subsequent nuclear technologies. I want to stay in the tension you describe -- acknowledging nuance, resisting a moral stance, contextualizing vs sensationalizing. But audiences don’t always want that complexity. It’s challenging. Anyway, thanks for sharing this reflection. It inspires me.
Thank you so much for your kind words and taking the time to read this! May I ask, what was your grandfather's name? Any chance he was friends with Richard Feynman? So fascinating to grow up with such a grandfather!
His name was Donald Mueller (badge H-11 in the security log). He certainly knew Feynman but I’m not sure how closely they worked together. So much of what he did is still classified! I know he worked on the implosion model (the trinity model) under Seth Nedermeyer and the explosives team (Kistiakowsky). He had a close connection with Hans Bethe over his career and idolized Niels Bohr. It’s a fascinating and terrifying part of our family history, for sure.
Wow! Do you have any family heirlooms from his time at Los Alamos?
Not many. I do have a photocopy of a photo of a successful experiment. It's signed by my grandfather's team. Just looks like a mangled (exploded?) contraption on a track. It must have been meaningful to him, but none of us can really decipher it.
Still amazing!
Ultrasound does not involve ionizing radiation and can be used to take images of living things repeatedly with no real risk--there's a theoretical risk from overheating, but doctors will regularly follow things with ultrasound they'd hesitate to get a CAT scan on.
I think to be a scientist you have to actually discover new knowledge and publish it in a journal. Since so much basic knowledge has already been found, it's hard for you to add any without really expensive equipment.
The arts, well, you know better than me I'd imagine. Still, from what I can tell you can use an old form if you want to. You could paint your porch in the style of a Renaissance painting, you just won't get shown at a New York gallery. But if you just want to make something beautiful, well, who cares?
I worked with a radiologist who used an x-ray machine built for treating cancer on my daisy seeds. He cranked up the machine to such a high level of radiation (far beyond normal use) that he quickly grew paranoid about the possibility that he could have broken the machine and would lose his head at work, but fortunately that was not the case!
To be sure, I have never claimed to be a scientist.