Word: rabi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...note the judgment of Professor I. I. Rabi, member of the President's Science Advisory Board (TIME, November 14th), that I am "not technically qualified to discuss such questions" as I raised in my two open letters to the Presidential candidates on the issue of nuclear tests. Professor Rabi apparently means that, since I am not a nuclear physicist, I am incompetent to discuss issues of public policy with regard to the development of nuclear technology. This is an absurd and arrogant judgment...
...January, 1951, just after President Truman had issued his directive to determine the technical feasibility of a thermonuclear weapon, I was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission. I recall that Professor Rabi and some of his confreres on the General Advisory Council were profoundly wrong at that time, both in their scientific estimates about the feasibility and practicability of the new weapon. It turned out later that the Soviet Union was no more than six months behind us in nuclear technology. Their thermonuclear or H-bomb test was made, in fact, only about six months after ours...
...aware of Professor Rabi's strongly emotional opposition, and that of a segment of the scientific fraternity, to the resumption of nuclear tests. In my judgment Professor Rabi and his confreres are wrong again. Their technical qualifications as nuclear physicists do not guarantee the validity of their views on public policy...
...resumption of nuclear tests. Cornell University Physicist Hans Bethe, one of the chief developers of the H-bomb, called Murray's statement an attempt "to divert public opinion from the real issue: to get a treaty that could lead to disarmament." Columbia's Physicist Isidor I. Rabi sniffed that Murray was "technically not qualified to discuss such questions...