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The
Nuclear Basement:
Relics
of the the Manhattan Project
By
Michael
R. Schreiber and
Gabriel
Rodríguez-Nava
 he
first floor of Pupin Hall on the campus of Columbia University is
like a physics museum. The long hallway, which is usually locked
behind closed doors, is home to scientific equipment dating back
to the 1920s at least - some of it having historical significance.
Columbia
University was home to the early stages of the Manhattan Project,
the United States' quest beginning in the late 1930s to build a
nuclear device. The project was led at Columbia by Enrico Fermi
- an Italian physicist who fled fascism and was enlisted to
work on the nuclear project.
"If
you asked physicists who was the most accomplished physicist of the
20th century, they would probably say Fermi," said Bill Zajc,
a current professor of physics at Columbia. Zajc said that Fermi was
both a brilliant theorist and great practitioner of physics experiments.
And in 1939, much of his work was done on the first floor of Pupin.
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Lab
equipment, long since forgotten, sits in a desk on the first
floor of Pupin.
PHOTO:
Michael R. Schreiber
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The
hallway is littered with discarded pieces of equipment. Vacuum tubes.
A cryogenic freezing apparatus. The discarded control panel of an
electron microscope. Most of the stuff dates back to the 1960s and
1970s.
But
perhaps the most intriguing piece of equipment is the remnants of
the first cyclotron ever to complete a fission experiment. The cyclotron,a
particle accelerator, is a steel structure composed of magnetic
coils that causes subatomic particles to spiral at high speeds.
The cyclotron in the basement of Pupin weighs tons and made possible
the eventual development of the first atom bomb.
"This
was absolutely shocking news in 1939," said Zajc, who began
teaching nuclear physics at Columbia in 1986. "It became clear
that they wanted to keep it a secret because of the nasty stuff."
 n
1965, part of the cyclotron was transported to the Smithsonian for
safe-keeping. The rest, however, remains on the first floor of Pupin.
Its weight and mass seem to have crushed the floor beneath and the
machine is partially underground.
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Obscured
by pieces discarded of scientific equipment, this cyclotron,
the first machine to split the atom, lies abandoned on the
first floor of
Pupin Hall.
PHOTO: Michael R. Schreiber
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Zajc
had never seen the machine before. The first floor of Pupin has
become a dumping ground for discarded equipment and files for both
retired and dead professors, as well those who just don't have the
room for the stuff in their labs.
Zajc
saw a bookshelf containing some volumes that caught his interest.
They once belonged to a colleague, now retired. He decided to take
them up to his office, where they will remain for the time being.
"I'm
going to liberate these," he said. "I'll take them up
to my office and they'll sit up there until I die."
After that, they'll most likely wind up back on the first floor.
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