Nathaniel Weisenberg: My name is Nate Weisenberg.
I’m here with Harris Mayer in Los Alamos,
New Mexico.
It’s October 11, 2017.
My first question: if you could just say your
name for the camera and spell it, please.
Harris Mayer: My name is Harris Mayer, H-a-r-r-i-s
M-a-y-e-r.
Weisenberg: Thank you.
I know you had a story that you wanted to
begin with, so I will let you go ahead.
Mayer: Thank you very much.
I appreciate the time you have spent with
me.
I’ve spent some time thinking about this.
But I’ve spent my life living it.
I will start reading a little bit, and then
we can go into conversations.
The title, Tidbits of Past and Future: The
National Laboratories, Los Alamos and Livermore,
and Personal Friendships, for the Atomic Heritage
Foundation, and my name, Harris L. Mayer,
and this is October 11, 2017.
I’ll start.
The Hiroshima nuclear explosion:
We were standing in the corridor of the old
chemistry building at Columbia University,
waiting for the elevator to take us out for
lunch on August6, 1944 [misspoke: August 6,
1945].
I, Harris Mayer, remember the date, for it
was the birthday of my sister, Blossom.
I was with my coworker, Boris Jacobson.
We were led by the head of our opacity group,
Maria Goeppert-Mayer, later in 1963, Nobel
Physics Laureate.
Suddenly, Professor Harold Urey, head of the
Chemistry Department, and close friend of
Maria and her husband, Joe Mayer, appeared
from his nearby office.
He told us with satisfaction in his voice
that the uranium fission weapon had just exploded
over Hiroshima.
Not physically present then, but much in my
mind, was Professor Edward Teller.
He was the one who had arranged that the opacity
work of Los Alamos lab be done by Maria Mayer
at Columbia.
Then, she would not have to leave her husband
to come out to New Mexico.
Edward Teller became like a father to me,
and influenced the rest of my life.
Even more important than a second father,
remaining behind in the opacity group was
a very young woman, Rosalie Ann Holtsberg.
I can imagine Edward and Maria talking to
each other about our group, wondering when
the two, Harris and Rosalie, would get together.
Later, on October 30, 1946, she became my
bride.
Next, a very short thing about the universities.
There could be no nuclear weapon without the
fantastic capacity of the United States industry.
But, they needed the creativity to envision
one, and the scientific knowledge of what
was required to bring that vision to reality.
Whence came the scientists from the great
universities of Europe and the United States.
The main universities of Europe were Cambridge
of England, Copenhagen of Denmark – that’s
Niels Bohr – and Leipzig, that’s [Arnold]
Sommerfeld and [Werner] Heisenberg.
And Gottingen [University]; that’s the mathematician,
[David] Hilbert and Max Born, the physicist.
From the United States, Harvard [University],
Columbia [University], [University of] Chicago,
and the University of California at Berkeley,
were the organizations responsible for getting
the nuclear weapon together and actually making
it.
Weisenberg: Harris, you were going to tell
me about one of the nuclear weapons test or
“shots” that you witnessed.
Mayer: Very good.
Now, the [Operation Greenhouse] George shot
on Enewetak Atoll was a test of the probability
of a successful thermonuclear weapon.
At that time, a thermonuclear weapon was a
very firm idea in [Edward] Teller’s mind,
but he didn’t have a successful one in his
mind.
Well, there was a great deal of preparation
for the shot, and I was involved in the preparation.
This preparation was for me, an introduction,
to some of the most important people in the
rest of my life.
I didn’t know it at the time.
But there I met Ernie Krause and Herb York.
You may know the numbers.
I made lifetime friends.
We’ll talk about the friends later, but
they are even more important than the work.
We start out from the Hawaiian Islands.
The way you start out is you wait for the
airplane.
Well, the airplane comes, and we don’t get
on.
This goes on for two days.
We get on the airplane, it takes off, and
it flies, and I look out the window.
On the right-hand side, the most right engine
stops.
Well, I was young at the time and one engine
out of four stops.
That’s nothing.
Then someone comes in and says, “The other
right engine stopped.”
I am so clear about that, everything is fine.
Somebody comes from the front of the plane
and says, “You all got to get in the back
to get the weight.”
Now, we have two colonels, who are very great
flyers, and they say, “We ought to take
care of this plane.”
One goes up front and he comes back.
“It’s all right, I know this pilot.”
The plane turns around and we land.
I got out, and there are four fire engines
waiting for us.
This seems just fine.
Now, fifteen years later, I tell this story,
just as I’ve just told you, to a good friend
of mine.
He’s a pilot.
He said, “Harris, you had just one chance.
If he did it wrong a little bit, you were
lost.”
I got so scared.
Now, this is fifteen years after this happened.
I trembled, and for about half an hour, I
couldn’t get myself together.
Weisenberg: Oh, my goodness.
Mayer: It’s so wise to know that you don’t
know.
[Laughter] Well, the plane takes off, it travels
at 7,000 feet altitude, because in those days,
they had no over pressure.
It’s a long, long flight, and I have in
mind now the difficulties of flying.
I know naught about flying, but I know physics
and geometry.
And it’s all clouded up.
There were no radars at that time in the area.
That pilot had to be an expert, and he had
God with him to give him the light.
As we came, the sun came out.
And there’s the island around it with the
purple lake in the middle, Enewetak.
We land, and they come, and you have to be
called off.
They call off, and we had a great group of
important people around.
[J.] Carson Mark comes off, he was the head
of the theoretical division, and a wonderful
man.
And a friend for life, but he was a friend
for many.
He comes off, and everybody gets off the plane
but me.
Carson comes back, and he said, “You’re
not on 
the list, but I’ll talk to them.”
He talked to them, and he convinced the military
that Harris Mayer was essential.
They couldn’t let me go back on the plane,
they would have to have me.
And he arranged to have me.
I had to take the secrecy test all over again
there.
I got on the island.
But they didn’t know that I was coming and
there was no place for me.
When we get on Parry Island, well, of course,
we know what to do.
There was a man there who went home for three
weeks.
You could just stay in his place.
So I slept in his bed.
I must say that the second time I came out
to the island, I was very much well-treated.
Well, let’s get back to the island and the
shot.
The shot goes off.
It was a very, very big shot, it was deliberately
promised to be that.
It was supposed to be a test for the thermonuclear
weapon, and there was a little bit of thermonuclear
weapon there.
And this was the pet of Edward Teller.
By this time – Edward Teller was, how to
put it.
He was a great friend.
The fact was he was 13 years older than me
only.
My father was 25 years older than me.
He was like my physics father, and he was
so for the rest of my life.
There is a whole story about the rest.
I was talking with him now out at the island.
The shot was supposed to be the shot which
would be the forerunner of the thermonuclear
weapon.
He [Teller] said to me, “I have this idea
about thermonuclear weapons.”
I said, “Edward, this is the idea.
Well, we don’t have to have the shot.”
He said, “Harris, let me tell you some things.
You must learn about life.
It’s not only physics.
If we don’t do the shot, they’ll say ‘why
did you have to have it?
Why did you prepare for it?’
Let’s have the shot and we won’t be told
we were fools for preparing for it and not
doing it.
And you know, we might learn something.”
We had the shot.
It went off, and we did learn something.
Mayer: Let’s go back to the George shot,
and its preparation.
I was very much involved in the preparation.
I worked with Ernie Krause, taught him all
he needed to know for the experiment.
He became my friend for life, and it was important
later on.
Of course, Berkeley was involved, too, and
Herb York was 
the young scientist in charge of a group.
A fantastic group.
Seven people and, you know, seven great people
there.
I’ll tell you a little about it.
I, of course, had a hotel room.
Edward Teller was not there at the time.
I was working with Herb York, and Harold Brown,
and Mike May, and so on.
They didn’t know anything about nuclear
weapons, and they knew very little about everything
else, except the science that could be.
They were all great people.
I started talking with them and trying to
teach them things.
Well, teaching these people was just wonderful.
We sort of all learned together.
Harold Brown was under Herb York.
But I saw in Harold Brown the most brilliant
person I had seen before, among the young
people.
He would ask the most important questions.
Well, okay.
So 
I met these people and Herb York, Harold Brown,
Mike May were friends for the rest of my life
and influenced me in very many ways.
Let’s get back to – I’m on the island,
the shot is fired.
Louis Rosen had an experiment there, and he
needed to get his film.
Well, I went along with him.
Now, I have to tell you something.
Both Rosalie and I, oh, we were married by
this time, married very well, and we were
at Los Alamos.
It turned out that we could not have children.
It was both Rosalie couldn’t have the children
and I couldn’t have children.
So we were a perfect couple.
When it came to go in radioactive places,
you know, it didn’t matter with me.
I couldn’t have children anyway.
I went with Louis through the radioactive
areas to pick up his material, and brought
them home.
Incidentally, the boat ride there was—that
was the place where there was the most trouble,
and the most possibility of having accidents
in my life, than the whole nuclear explosion
stuff.
Weisenberg: Just because the water was so
choppy?
Mayer: It’s not that the water itself was
so choppy, but the landing.
The safety engineer—I forget his name for
the moment, we were great, great friends—said,
“The thing you have to worry about is you’ll
break your leg when you go off and are smashed
into deck.”
That was the risky thing out there, not the
bomb.
Well, we come back, and Louis Rosen goes into
his little laboratory, which was an accessory
to, essentially a room where people could
sit.
People sitting and waiting, and I was there.
Next to me, Fred Reines, and next to him,
Louis Rosen and George Cowan, the four of
us.
We were, again, great friends and great friends
for life.
All of these people made wonderful lives.
That should be, you know, four stories in
themselves.
Anyway, here we are sitting, waiting for Louis
to go through his films, and we’re waiting.
You know, five minutes passed, we say, “It
didn’t go.
He’s worried about it and he doesn’t know
what to do.”
One hour passes, and this is not an estimate,
it’s a fact.
He comes out, and he says, “I have it!”
That devil, he had stayed in there, he saw
that he had the right picture.
He took out the microscope, he tested it,
he found out what it is.
He came out not with the film, but with the
answer.
I never forgave him.
Weisenberg: This was proving that the test
had worked in the way you wanted it to work?
Mayer: It’s very much more complicated.
But his experiment turned out right.
Well, here, the results are unnecessary.
At that time, Teller had gotten his idea for
the real bomb that could work.
And, as I told you before, he told me that
we should do the experiment anyway.
Well, we became lifetime friends, Herb York,
Louis Rosen, George Cowan, Fred Reines.
Weisenberg: How did you get involved in the
testing in the Pacific?
Mayer: You have to know everything about how
the Los Alamos laboratory worked at that time.
It had nothing to do with organization, and
nothing to do with what anybody outside would
feel.
And this was wonderful.
We in the theoretical division – at least,
the group of people who were older, not in
age, but in being there.
Fred Reines was an example of this.
A little later than this time – let me go
ahead for a moment – after Fred had done
this wonderful work, he had the idea.
Since this was about T Division, this is important.
He had an idea.
He had become the person who was in charge
of the theoretical aspects of the nuclear
tests.
He, indeed, left T Division and went to the
special group.
They had a fancy name.
He came back and went to – Carson Mark and
Pogo [codename for the Pacific testing staff],
and this was very good.
All right.
Now, let’s start about this, because it’s
Carson Mark and he works with T Division.
But it’s very important, because it combines
two wonderful persons, Fred Reines, who was
my closest friend for life.
The families were together.
Rosalie and I, Sylvia and Fred, throughout
our life.
We exchanged houses together, to see how each
other’s worked.
He came, Fred, and went.
I was trying to give a talk at one of the
special things in the life of my son.
I was failing.
He stood up and did it for me.
There were many things that I did for him
when his child, Robert, was in the Army.
This was way after the war.
I arranged that I could get Robert 
a position, actually, right near here, for
his stay, a very good position.
This is Carson Mark, for the moment, and Fred
Reines.
Now, Fred was head of the Pogo staff, and
in my mind, he would’ve become the next
director of the laboratory.
Fred came to me and said, “You know, it’s
time for me to do some scientific work.”
He went up to Carson Mark and said, “I don’t
want to do anything now but think about science.”
He [Mark] said, “Fred, you deserve it, from
all you’ve done.”
Fred sat for one year thinking about science
and what he should do.
And out came the neutrino.
Mayer: The Nobel Prize for that was given
to him too late.
He did the experiments in 1954 and 1955.
In 1954, he said, “Probably there’s a
neutrino.”
In 1955, there is a neutrino.
In 1995, he got the Nobel Prize.
At that time, Fred was ill.
He was really unable to really appreciate
the prize.
In 1998, he died.
Now, I was with him through this whole time.
He had a wonderful life.
There’s no question about it.
He should have gotten the Nobel Prize, so
that he could enjoy it before.
But the money helped his family.
The Nobel people should learn about it.
Mayer: He [Frederick Reines] died in 1998.
This is almost 20 years, isn’t it?
Weisenberg: Yeah.
I believe the Los Alamos Historical Society
has his Nobel Prize.
Is that right?
Mayer: Oh, I didn’t know that, but–
Weisenberg: I think they have it in an exhibit
now.
Mayer: Oh.
Well, Fred never had a lot of money, and the
Nobel Prize was – his half was $400,000,
I believe.
And that just helped Sylvia, not Fred.
He should’ve gotten that Nobel Prize when
it could have helped him in life, not as a
symbol.
Maria [Mayer] is a different story.
She got the prize in 1963, and she lived quite
a bit after.
But she was frail at the end.
The Nobel Prize was done well then.
It was very nice.
There were two people working separately on
the same thing, not knowing each other.
That they should share the prize, that that
was the fair thing to do.
That’s how good scientists are.
They’re good people, too.
Okay.
Now, that’s sort of a diversion, but it
says something about Carson Mark, and how
he treated T Division.
And I’ll say something about that.
Take as an example, in my case – now this
goes back in the time of T Division, and we’re
talking about, what is it, 1950-something,
rather early.
This is a time when Edward Teller had 
gotten his ideas.
I wanted to go along with the old idea for
the Super, and not the thermonuclear weapon.
I said, “There’s something about this
Super, which we should learn about.”
This was Edward’s prize, before he got the
right idea.
I want to follow up on that idea.
He said, “Harris, by all means, do.”
So the Super did not die.
I did work on it, and I didn’t keep that
promise of mine.
I worked on the new thermonuclear weapon again,
as well.
But as I understand it – and I never had
the special things you need with Livermore
– I will say that someone told me the Super
could go many years later.
I had been working on the Manhattan Project,
first of all, in Columbia.
Then when Columbia disappeared in just the
end of 1945, we were transferred to the University
of Chicago.
And there, Teller took me with him.
Actually, the whole group from Columbia, of
the theoretical division people, moved – and
the opacity group moved with Teller, and Maria
Mayer, Joe Mayer.
Harold Urey came along with us, too.
So we had a very good time at the University
of Chicago.
When Teller asked me to work on the opacity
project in 1944, I said, “I can’t.
I have to get my Ph.D.”
He said, “I’ll give you a Ph.D for this
work.”
So, okay.
I worked with Teller and it comes out that
I was with him working when Hiroshima came.
When 1946 was about to come, two things happened.
First of all, the project disappeared in Columbia,
and moved to Chicago.
I moved along with it, but I wanted to wait
a little while, because I was with my sister
as a chaperone, going on Christmas vacation
with Rosalie.
That’s the time I asked if she would marry
me, and she said yes.
Then I get a call from home.
“You have to get out of here and get to
Chicago.
Otherwise, you’re going to be drafted.”
I left my sister with Rosalie in the Adirondacks,
ran down to New York City, got on a train
out to Chicago for Teller and Maria Mayer.
So I didn’t get drafted, and I left the
woman who had promised to marry me behind.
Now, of course, Edward Teller and Maria knew
all about what I was doing and helped me very
much along.
They had gotten just what they wanted.
They wanted to see Rosalie and I get married.
It took a little time.
In October of 1946, I went from Chicago back
to New York, got the license, married her,
and took Rosalie with me back to Chicago.
Now, none of this would have been possible
without Edward Teller.
When I say he was like a father, he was
Okay.
Going back, I am visiting Los Alamos for the
first time in my life.
This is where I want to be, because that’s
the future.
Columbia was gone, I needed to get my Ph.D.
at Chicago now, and that was guaranteed by
Teller.
But there’s all the red tape that’s necessary,
and I’ll go back later.
I am going to Los Alamos to see what it is,
and it’s all gone.
It really died, and it was revived.
Everybody was leaving, and they couldn’t
leave quickly, so the professors began giving
classes to all the younger people, so it would
help them when they left.
Now, clearly, I knew the name Feynman.
I knew what he had done, but I’d never met
him.
I’m with a group of people from Columbia,
who had left Columbia, and I didn’t know
where they went.
Here they were, all my friends from the physics
department.
Even though I was in the chemistry department,
my heart was with the physics department.
There they are, and they were all sitting
at a table.
A young man comes running towards us.
It’s Dick Feynman.
He says, “I’ve just found out something.
I taught my class how to integrate, they can
integrate any function.”
We all laughed.
We know you can’t integrate any function.
He said, “I’ll show you how.
I taught them the numerical method.”
We said, “You jerk, you fooled us!
That’s not integration.”
He says, “You’re darn sure it is.”
That’s how I met Dick Feynman.
He became a special kind of friend.
I did not spend many times, but only about
five or six times in my life with him.
When Feynman left 
Los Alamos, well, Feynman had gotten along
with [Hans] Bethe.
That was wonderful.
You could hear the laughter in them.
I wasn’t there, but everybody could tell
Bethe and Feynman.
Bethe said, “Come along to Cornell with
me.”
Well, at Cornell, he had to have a place to
live.
It turned out that he lived in the same big
house that a person who became one of my very
good friends, Bob Frank, and Evelyn Frank.
Well, Bob Frank comes to Los Alamos, and I’m
a very good friend with him.
Later on, his daughter has to get married,
and of course, Rosalie and I went to the marriage.
And who’s there?
Dick Feynman.
He is a good friend of Bob Frank’s.
Feynman is an amazing man in very many ways.
A very peculiar man, and that’s the wonderful
part about him as well.
He comes to meet Bob Frank and his child.
He sees me and Rosalie.
He doesn’t know me, but he knows that I’m
Bob Frank’s friend.
So of course, he says hello.
That’s it.
Many other times I met Bob Frank, and one
of the times was when I met Feynman.
One of those times when Bob Frank’s daughter
died of a bullet wound, and we don’t know
how that happened.
Feynman came to help the family.
Rosalie and I – by that time, we’d been
married for a long time – very good friends
with the Franks, we came also.
This was all that was there.
Feynman took charge and he stayed for three
days with us.
He arranged, how to put it?
Make the Franks feel sorrow, yes, but that
life was still valuable.
He met with Rosalie now and I, and by that
time, from other cases, we were friends.
He took care of everything and also, he knew
that Bob and Evelyn Frank should be alone
at times, so he spent time with Rosalie and
me.
And we talked about everything.
Feynman was not only interested in art, but
he was actually a very capable [artist].
I was not at the laboratory during the war.
I know a great deal about it from history,
and it was an amazing thing.
What was the spirit in the laboratory?
Now, I was not there, but I learned about
it in the future.
I will say it in a simple way: Get the bomb
before [Werner] Heisenberg does it.
See, all the scientists knew Heisenberg, they
knew him very well.
They knew his capabilities.
They didn’t know what he would be allowed
to do in Germany.
We couldn’t find out.
And there was fear in their eyes when they
came.
I wasn’t there, but I knew Teller very well
and I knew him all the time through that,
because he came back to help in our work on
the opacity project.
The opacity project started in June 1944,
and kept on forever.
It’s still there now.
Edward would come, and he would certainly
tell Maria everything, because she had the
clearance.
So we knew, and he knew, and he was worried
about Heisenberg.
And so that’s how I felt.
We have to get a bomb before Heisenberg.
Weisenberg: Were you at SAM [Substitute Alloy
Materials] Labs at Columbia?
Mayer: Yeah.
Edward said he would get me his Ph.D. But
how do you get a Ph.D. in a university?
They have to have a document.
Well, we had 150 pages on the opacity project.
No, they can’t use it.
So we said, “Okay, we’ll give them something.”
So Rosalie and I sit down and we tell about
the hydrogen and helium things in the sun.
We write a paper together, and it’s ten
pages long, and we give that to the University.
That’s what’s in the laboratory for my
Ph.D., and Rosalie and I wrote it.
She did the actual typing also.
Teller, of course, said, “Sure."
Now, the opacity paper is now declassified,
and you can read the 150 pages if you want
to.
We violated all the laws without breaking
the rules.
I’ll tell you about the way the Ph.D. was
actually given.
Now, this work was completed in 1955– in
1945.
And, I’m told they’re ready to give my
Ph.D. examination.
It is 1947, Christmastime.
I’m already out at Los Alamos.
Well, I get on a train and come there, and
they welcomed me.
There’s a little office there that I go
to.
I opened the door.
Who’s there?
There’s Edward Teller.
There’s also Maria Mayer.
Enrico Fermi, and who is it, Robert Millikan.
[Robert] Millikan 
and [Enrico] Fermi have their Nobel, Maria’s
going to get it, and 
Teller can’t get it, because of the Oppie
[J. Robert Oppenheimer] affair.
So there are really four Nobel Prize people
there.
I come in and they say, “Harris, welcome.
Have a nice trip?
How do you feel?”
So they start asking a question.
Fermi, of course, asks a question.
It’s a question about opacities.
That’s the question I never could understand.
I had worked on it, and I did the practical
thing.
I knew how to bypass it.
Edward starts talking, and he tries to explain
to Fermi what it’s about.
They’re having a wonderful conversation.
I’m learning all this stuff.
Okay.
They decide what the answer is to the question.
Now, they try to teach it to Maria.
She listens.
Now, she’s very good, but she’s not Fermi,
she’s not even Teller.
So they explain it to her.
She understands it.
They say, “Fine.
That’s great.
Harris, we have to decide on your examination.
Would you please step outside?”
Now, I have spoken no word on this topic.
The doors on the 
University of Chicago’s, that is a very
thick, heavy thing.
They opened the door and I go out.
The door is not closed, and they say, “Harris,
come in.”
Edward said to me, “Now, you are a Ph.D.,
and you must call me Edward, not Professor.”
Frances Richey: It’s called the brotherhood.
Mayer: I got it for a paper that Rosalie and
I wrote on the opacities.
The important problem on what was in there
was solved by Fermi and Teller on my examination.
And I got the credit.
Okay.
Now, this was how Edward Teller helped me
in life.
I must tell you another thing that has nothing
to do with physics.
This is to do with Frances Richey.
I’m working with Frances Richey, and now
this was in 1961 or something like that.
And I have a problem.
I don’t tell her about it, but this is something
that’s just worrying me.
I happened to have a trip up to—I’m living
in Los Angeles, working there.
Richey: We just met in 1960.
Mayer: Yeah.
Richey: September 1960.
Mayer: She is a very good worker.
So I happened to be going up to Livermore,
and I see Edward Teller.
I say, “Edward, what can I do?
Here’s this” – I’ve always said girl,
not woman – “This girl I’m working with,
and she’s very, very good.
But she’s so stubborn about this.”
He said, “Harris, you have to learn.
You know your physics, but you must learn
about life.
You mustn’t get angry at her.
You mustn’t try to convince her.
This problem that you’re talking about,
it’s absolutely trivial.
You’re talking about that she says three-quarters
and you say one, numbers.
You must just leave that.
As a matter of fact, when you work with her,
you should make some mistake, so that she
feels good about this.”
I take her advice very well, and we get along.
We get along very much better.
She becomes, not merely my helper, but my
companion.
Teller and Bethe and I had relations there.
These were good men, good people.
They were not merely good scientists.
They always helped me, and Edward was there
all the time.
Anyway, it so happens, and I don’t remember
exactly when this is, but I happened to be
at Los Alamos.
This is after I left Los Alamos, and Marshall
Rosenbluth, who also left Los Alamos, came
back and we’re together.
It happened also that Bethe and Teller were
there at the same time.
Marshall and I get together and say, “They’re
together.”
At the same place, at the same time.
Richey: Do you have a date on this?
Mayer: Something around 1960, I don’t remember
the date.
We decide, let’s get these two together.
Both of us knew both of them.
I’m the one to see Bethe.
Marshall comes back 
and says Teller is certainly willing to 
make amends.
I have this information, and I go to see Bethe.
Hans Bethe says to me, “Harris, you are
such a wonderful man.”
You know, that’s ridiculous, of course.
He says, “You have so much kindness in you,
and you can forgive Teller.
I cannot.”
That’s the story, but it’s not the end.
The end is not nice.
Marshall and I knew both of them.
You know, we knew them, we knew them well.
We knew them not merely as scientists, we
knew them as friends.
Certainly, Bethe and Teller both helped me
in my life, and knew everything about it.
So 
we gave up.
This was, of course, about the Oppie affair
that Bethe couldn’t forgive Teller.
But I must say something more.
There was a difference between these two men,
and this Oppie affair, I think, accentuated
the difference.
They kept apart in making commendations and
suggestions about significant things in the
military and other parts of life.
I’m watching these two people, and 
this is in—I have to get this exactly right—this
is one of the military affairs in 
aircraft in combat.
It’s the very large bombers and 
Edward said, “They will be able to do it.”
Bethe says, “No, they won’t.”
I know about all of this.
I know about all these things.
At that time, it could not be done.
Edward had an idea that it would be done in
the future.
So they were both right.
At that time, it couldn’t be done, and in
the future, it could be done.
Bethe said it couldn’t be done.
Teller said it will be done.
The Oppie affair was behind—look, those
two men were so smart that they could certainly
see that not now, but in the future, is trivial.
But the Oppie affair means they must be apart.
So knowing both of these men and essentially
worshipping both of them, I could not get
them to say yes together.
I have had a full and in a way a blessed life.
Let me say some things about it.
I’ll go a little further back.
When I was 15 years old, I had been friends
with a boy, and he had a younger sister.
I knew her a little bit, and when she became
14, she was a woman.
I fell in love with her, I fell in love.
She fell in love with me.
It was and is a great love.
We went together in that special way, but
it was clear to both of us that it was not
a marriage.
We kept knowing and being with each other,
and indeed, I was a week with her before she
got married.
We were very close.
She got married.
That was my first love.
Now, that was when I was 23.
I meet Rosalie.
Now, this is a nice person, and after a while,
I knew her well enough and we got married.
As I’ve told you before, I guess, that we
were a very good match.
Neither of us could have children of our own,
so we adopt three children, and have a very
special life after that.
After 40 years or so, more than that – but
in the meantime, I know Frances and work with
her.
And Rosalie dies and after a while, I know
her so well.
Did I tell you this before?
So I say, you know, “Why don’t we get
married?”
She says, “Do you think I’m crazy?
I’ve been married three times before and
it was terrible.”
I said, “All right.
Let’s live together.”
And after four years, I say, “Frances, you
know, if we get married, we can save some
money on income tax.”
She said yes.
We got married, and that was in 1994.
Now this is a woman who I know since 1960.
We finally get married and we’re living
well forever after.
Well, you know, what I wanted to say at the
beginning of this: I want to talk to you as
physicists, and we’re people, too.
