A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II
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Published May 2003
352 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
Legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the twentieth century -- Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, and others -- at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York, in the late 1930s. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb.
Jennet Conant, the granddaughter of James Bryant Conant, one of the leading scientific advisers of World War II, enjoyed unprecedented access to Loomis' papers, as well as to people intimately involved in his life and work. She pierces through Loomis' obsessive secrecy and illuminates his role in assuring the Allied victory.
"Those interested in science or WWII history will appreciate this well-researched bio." - Publishers Weekly.
"Conant is so good at capturing the high-spirited, freewheeling methodology brought to bear on the many critical research projects that one sometimes forgets that the precocious upstarts behind the method were greatly responsible for saving the world from fascism. Highly recommended" - Library Journal.
"Remarkable and remarkably told, as if F. Scott Fitzgerald had penned Batman. " - Kirkus Reviews
"Her group portrait offers a healthy reminder of how much good science depends on community and collaboration, not solitary genius." - New Yorker.
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Jennet Conant is the bestselling author of four critically acclaimed books about World War II. Conant spent her childhood listening to personal stories from her grandfather, James B. Conant, who was the main administrator of the Manhattan Project and President of Harvard University for 20 years. This connection, along with her training in journalism, led her to the dramatic stories about the invention of RADAR, the development of the atomic bomb, and a British spy ring in Wartime Washington.
Conant's first book and New York Times bestseller, Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II, tells the largely forgotten dramatic story of eccentric Wall Street mogul and
amateur scientist Alfred Loomis, who brought together many ...
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