The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics and the First Atomic Bomb(Science and Literature)

John Canaday analyzes a variety of texts produced by physicists before, during, and after the Second World War, including Niels Bohr's "The Quantum Postulate"; the Blegdamsvej Faust, a parody of Goethe's Faust that cast physicists as its principle characters; The Los Alamos Primer, the technical lectures used for training at Los Alamos; scientists' descriptions of their work and of the Trinity test; and Leo Szilard's post-war novella, The Voice of the Dolphins.

About the Author :
John Canaday is a prize-winning poet and playwright who has been a Watson Fellow and the Starbuck Fellow in Poetry at Boston University. He tutors students in literature, writing, history, mathematics, and physics.


Review :
"A revelatory exploration of the relation between literary and scientific languages, which John Canaday analyzes with an exceptional sophistication that combines analytical rigor and a wonderful aesthetic and moral sensibility."--Myra Jehlen, Rutgers University
"A stunning examination of how nuclear physicists of the early twentieth century used literary conventions to translate their discoveries about nature into human language, and used that same language to deal with the human and moral consequences of their development of the bomb."--Nicholas Clifford, Middlebury College
"Canaday's insightful study has added a fourth dimension to our understanding of how we 'learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.'"--Martin J. Sherwin, author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and its Legacies
"Physicists in the first half of this century became caught up in knowledge, ways of doing science, military projects, and social consequences that pushed their means of representation and understanding to the limit. This important study reveals how the Los Alamos physicists adopted literary modes of expression to come to terms with the worlds they were making and transforming."--Charles Bazerman, author of Shaping Written Knowledge
"The existence of 'the bomb' as a literary device is, Canaday demonstrates, as significant as its military and political reality. A fascinating and literate glimpse at the words, metaphors, texts, and subtexts that have shaped our nuclear age."--Richard Wolfson, author of Nuclear Choices