Berkeley to Berlin: How The Rad Lab Helped Avert Nuclear War

Heroes Behind Headlines

The success of the submarine-borne Polaris missile was a critical nuclear deterrent that helped President Kennedy stare down Khruschev during the 1961 Berlin Crisis. Ever since, this weapon has been a key strategic tool of the U.S. Tom Ramos's book "From Berkeley to Berlin," chronicles the scientific journey leading to the development of this and other nuclear weapons and the singular man whose "buoyant optimism spread to everyone around him and accounted for the attainment of many an 'impossible' objective."

Founded in 1931 on the U.C. Berkeley campus by famed physicist Ernest Lawrence, (Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the cyclotron in 1938) "The Rad Lab" attracted some of the finest talent in America, including J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1941, Lawrence challenged his team to deter Joseph Stalin's nuclear program in the USSR. Oppenheimer and Lawrence collaborated for more than a decade, their work together culminating on the Manhattan Project. Lawrence then founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose team further developed nuclear technology, including the Polaris missile.

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