Los Alamos Primer

Serber was a postdoctoral student of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Los Alamos Laboratory, and worked with him on the project from the very start.

It suggested a number of possible ways to assemble a critical mass of uranium-235 or plutonium, the most simple being the shooting of a "cylindrical plug" into a sphere of "active material" with a "tamper"—dense material which would reflect neutrons inward and keep the reacting mass together to increase its efficiency (this model, the Primer said, "avoids fancy shapes").

The calculations Serber reported indicated a critical mass of metallic U235 tamped with a thick shell of ordinary uranium of 15 kilograms: 33 pounds.

[3][4] The physicist Freeman Dyson, who knew Serber, Oppenheimer, and other participants of the Manhattan Project, called the Primer a "legendary document in the literature of nuclear weapons".

He praised "Serber's clear thinking", but harshly criticized the Primer's publication, writing "I still wish that it had been allowed to languish in obscurity for another century or two."

The primer succeeds all too well in recreating the Los Alamos mystique, the picture of this brilliant group of city slickers suddenly dumped into the remotest corner of the Wild West and having the best time of their lives building bombs.

Milton in his famous appeal with the title "Areopagitica", addressed to the English parliament in 1644, conceded to his enemies the point that books "are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth, and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men."

Dyson concludes his review writing: "With luck, this charming little book will be read only by elderly physicists and historians, people who can appreciate its elegance without being seduced by its magic.

John F. Ahearne writes that the book "remains mathematical", and that it can be useful to young scientists: "the insight to be gained from reading Serber's lucid descriptions of how to analyze complex events by using first approximations.

"[5] Paul W. Henriksen praised the book, writing that "one will be even more impressed with the magnitude of the effort to build an atomic bomb to try to end World War II".

It is a rare instance in which one of the contributors to a historical event has gone back and explained his work, its importance, and the mistakes that were made at the same time."

Settle also finds the primer to be unique in style and context, and sees it as "a significant contribution to the technical and scientific history of this important period.