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Peter Bacon Hales
(13 Nov 1950 - 26 Aug 2014)
American historian and author who wrote about the the cultural and environmental history of the Manhattan Project and the history of America from the Atomic Age until today. His books also include works on the history of urban photography, and how the 19th-century landscape photographer William Henry Jackson altered Americans’ views of their land.
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Science Quotes by Peter Bacon Hales (1 quote)
Groves hated the weather, and the weathermen; they represented chaos and the messengers of chaos. Weather violated boundaries, ignored walls and gates, failed to adhere to deadlines, disobeyed orders. Weather caused delays. The weather forecasters had opposed the [atomic bomb] test date for months—it was set within a window of unfavorable conditions: thunderstorms, rain, high winds, inversion layers. Groves had overridden them. … Groves saw it as a matter of insubordination when the weather forecasters refused to forecast good weather for the test.
— Peter Bacon Hales
In Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project (1999), 312. For the attitude of Groves toward the weather see his, 'Some Recollections of July 16, 1945', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Jun 1970), 26, No. 6, 27.
See also:
- Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project, by Peter Bacon Hales. - book suggestion.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
