Martin J. Sherwin

This, too, appealed to the engineer in Groves, who found himself nodding in agreement when Oppenheimer pitched the notion of a central laboratory devoted to this purpose, where, as he later testified, “we could begin to come to grips with chemical, metallurgical, engineering, and ordnance problems that had so far received no consideration.”

Rabi also gave a less practical but more profound reason for not joining: He did not, he told Oppenheimer, wish to make “the culmination of three centuries of physics” a weapon of mass destruction. This was an extraordinary statement, one that Rabi knew might well resonate with a man of Oppenheimer’s philosophical bent.

From the beginning, Oppenheimer and Groves had agreed that everyone’s salaries were to be pegged according to each recruit’s previous job. This resulted in wide disparities since a relatively young man recruited from private industry might well be paid much more than an older, tenured professor. To compensate for this inequality, Oppenheimer decreed that rents would be pro-rated according to salary.