A tale of openness and secrecy: The Philadelphia Story
A now little-known manuscript prepared by nine young physicists as a statement about the futility of scientific secrecy quickly became a test of the limits of free discourse in the nuclear age.
CONTROL OF INFORMATION RELATING TO ATOMIC ENERGY
IN the year 1633, Galileo was summoned by the Office of the Inquisition from Florence to Rome, there to submit himself to a catechetical examination by a court of Cardinals. The heresies of which he was "vehemently suspected" pertained to doctrinal matters, though scientific rather than religious or political. Galileo had advocated and extended the forbidden cosmology of Copernicus and had, in effect, discredited the "official" cosmology of Ptolemy. The outcome of this historic event is well known. Galileo was forced to abjure his heretical opinions; but the Inquisition treated him "with a consideration unexampled in its history" and the punishment inflicted upon him was comparatively mild. Science had all but won that freedom which it was shortly to attain, and which it was to enjoy in increasing measure for two centuries while it grew powerful in influence and opulent in prestige. In the main, this freedom was established as a by-product of the process by which other freedoms-of religious worship, of speech, of the press, of assembly-were won. The crucial battles were fought on other fronts, and the freedom of scientific communication emerged as a natural corollary of the general principle established in this struggle-that neither lay nor ecclesiastical authorities could impose their conformities on the conscience and critical intelligence of man. By the middle of the nineteenth century the general cause of freedom seemed definitely won, and if the principle was not universally established, it was at any rate firmly in the ascendant. To be sure, there were interludes of shadow and eclipse. In the realm of science, facts, the "fortifications of reason", were not always sufficient bulwark against the forces of bigotry and reaction. But on the whole, progress
Dividing the Glory of the Fathers
theere is an intense debate between the Russian secret service and nuclear scientists on the history of Soviet nuclear weapons. The author does not wish to take sides in this controversy, but has gathered materials on the role of the intelligence service in the creation of th Soviet atomic bomb from a variety of sources. He presents in this article previously unpublished information made available to him by Colonel Vladimir Barkovski of the Russian intelligence services.