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.
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!