REVIEWS

])reliminary meetings with Iraqi mili-tary officials (arranged by Lebanesearms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian). Butit wasn't until 1987 that Bull struck aileal with the Iraqis to modify some oftheir howitzers, to help them developseveral longer range versions, and towork on the much discussed Iraqi"supergim."

Adams speculates about what Sad-dam Hussein intended to do withsuch an unwieldy weapon, whichcould probably not have been firedmore frequently than three times aday. He leaves open the possibilitythat Iraq did in fact plan to use thegim for Bull's original purpose,launching satellites. Leaving asidethe question of the supergun's ulti-mate purpose, Adams provides thefullest account yet of Bull's contribu-tion to Iraij's military capabilities.both thi'ough direct contracts withIraq and through South African andAustrian arms manufacturers' salesof his howitzer design.

As for the lessons to be drawnfrom Bull's checkered career, Adamssuggests in his concluding chapterthat "Bull and his inventions aremerely symbols of a gi-eater prob-lem: the failure of the internationalcommunity to halt the spread ofweapons throughout the world, andthe seemingly endless cycle of prolif-eration that is a hallmark of the armsbusiness."

Adams descnbes the strengths andweaknesses of current efforts to curbthe spread of nuclear, chemical, bio-logical, and conventional amis, and of-fers a few pointed observations aboutways to improve them. The one thingmissing from Adams's analysis—andit would make the strongest link withthe rest of the book—is an analysis ofhow to deal with individuals like Bullwho decide to sell their design andmanufacturing knowledge to thehighest bidder. A fuller presentationof Adams's views on this issue wouldhave been a welcome addition to thebook's concluding section.

Finally, the biggest mystery of thebook—who killed Bull—is not defini-tively solved. It is clear that Bull wasgunned down by a professional assas-sin outside his Biussels apartment inMarch 1990, for reasons connectedwith his ongoing activities as an armsmerchant and scientific mercenary.Adams provides a reasoned analysis

of the strengths and weaknesses of ahalf dozen theories about who was be-hind Bull's assassination. He ends upleaning toward the now popular viewthat he was hit by Israeli intelligence,in part to stop the Iraqi supergunproject, and in part to serve "as awarning to all the other dealers oper-ating in the undergi'ound anns bazaarthat trading with Israel's enemies is adangerous business." •

William D. Hartung is the director ofthe Arms Transfer Control Project ofthe World Policy Institute in NewYork City. He is ivorking on a bookabout the future of U.S. arms trans-fer policy.

A life in scienceA Different Sort of Time:The Life of Jerrold Zacharias, Scien-tist, Engineer, Educatorby Jack S. GoldsteinM.I.T. Press, 1992373 pages; $35.00

BERNARD T. FELD

Jen-old Zacharias was the ideal scien-tist-administrator. He understood, aswell as anyone he supervised, the sci-entific and technical content of thework. And he did not hesitate to in-tervene directly when he perceived away of accelerating progress. At thesame time, he gave individual scien-tists maximum leeway for developingtheir skills and ideas.

Zacharias grew up in Jacksonville,Florida. From his earliest teens, hewas interested in things technical:cameras, automobile engines, and am-ateur radio transmission and receiv-ing. He studied engineering in highschool {physics was not yet taught inpublic schools) and he attendedColumbia University in New York,where he majored in mathematicsand minored in physics (no major wasavailable). After gi-aduation, he didhis doctoral research at the solidstate laboratory of Professor ShirleyQuimby, Columbia's foremost solidstate physics researcher.

After graduation he taught atHunter College and spent his sparetime doing research in Professor 1.1.

Rabi's atomic beam laboratory atColumbia. It was an exciting time;among other things, the gi'oup man-aged to measure the magnetic mo-ments of the proton and of the deu-tron (nucleus of heavy hydrogen). Forthis research anti the exploration ofits ramifications, Rabi eventually wonthe Nobel Prize.

But the real world intervened—Hitler oveiran Europe and threatenedto take over the British Isles. TheUnited States, through a project atM.I.T.'s "Radiation Laboratory," de-veloped a radar technology to combatGemian submarines that were threat-ening to cut off the U.S. lifeline toBritain. Zacharias contributed to thedevelopment of important submarinedetecting systems. Afterwai'd, thelab's "scientific stars" concentrated ontechnical issues related to winning thewiU' with Japan. Most of them wereenlisted into vanous aspects of theManhattan Project. Zacharias movedto Los Alamos where the atomic bombwas being designed.

The project soon revolved aroundthe possibility of developing an atom-ic bomb in time to avoid the necessityof an island-by-island march acrossthe Pacific, eventually culminating inan invasion of Japan. Such a mai'ch, ifcarried out, would have involvedmany casualties (although, in retro-spect, it is generally believed that anaval blockade of the Japanese Islandswould have produced a Japanese sur-render, probably requiring more timebut producing fewer casualties onboth sides).

Dropping the atomic bomb on Hi-roshima led rapidly to the Japanesesurrender and the end of the war. TheNagasaki bomb was superfluous, onlyproviding a public ciemonstration thatthe vast expenditure for the Plutoni-um Project had not been for nothing.

For Zacharias, myself, and the oth-ers at Los Alamos, the time had cometo consider how (in the immortalwords of General Groves) to "go backto your future lives." I was faced witha choice between two offers—an as-sistant professorship at Purdue Uni-versity and an instructorship withZacharias at M.I.T.'s newly-estab-lished Laboratory for Nuclear Sci-ence and Engineering. I chose M.I.T.and found Zacharias to be a superbleader. After getting the lab undercontrol, his interest slowly turned to

October 1992 43

REVIEWS

science teaching. His initial interestin teaching college physics changedwhen he realized that the greatestproblems arose because of the verypoor quality of science teaching inhigh school and gi'ade school. Typical-ly, he set about remedying these de-fects by organizing programs forteaching modern science to graduateand high school teachers. He was alsoattracted to the challenge of teachingscience in the underdeveloped world,and arranged for courses training sci-ence teachers in Africa.

Summer studies were amongZacharias's favorite methods ofgathering the right people to dealwith specific problems and issues. Itwas an obvious way to attract aca-demics, and Zacharias developed thetechnique to a fine art. If he wanteda colleague to participate in a sum-mer study, that colleague would findit almost impossible to turn himdown.

In all of his efforts, Zacharias hadthe unfailing cooperation and sup-port of his wife Leona, who was alsointerested in biology its and teach-ing. Together they raised their smallfamily and pursued their mutual in-terests with enthusiasm. Toward theend of his life, Zacharias sufferedfrom cardiac problems, and died onDecember 10, 1977, while undergo-ing triple bypass coronary arterysurgery.

Goldstein's book gives an excellentsummary of the life and accomplish-ments of a man about whom it wouldbe appropriate to use the old cliche:

"They broke the mold after theymade him." I highly recommend it. •

Bernard T. Feld, a member of theManhattan Project, is professor emer-itus at M.I.T. and a member- of theBulletin's Board ofDirectars.

War gamesPrisoner's Dilemmaby William PoundstoneDoubleday, 1992290 pages; $22.50

LINDA GAINES

This book is a pastiche. It combinesthree elements: the life of John vonNeumann, his development of gametheory, and the application of gametheory to the Cold War. Von Neu-mann (1903-1957) was a pioneer of theelectronic digital computer, a Manhat-tan Project pai-ticipant, and a brilliantmathematician. One of his major con-tributions—game theory—exploresconflict situations in which opponentsmust make simultaneous choices in away that optimize their payoffs.

V'on Neumann was from a well-offJewish family in Budapest, and hisextraordinary abilities were recog-nized early. Fleeing the persecutionof intellectuals and Jews in Hungaryand then in Germany, von Neumanncame to the United States, where, atage 80, he became a professor atPrinceton University's new Institute

for Advanced Study. His early contri-butions to mathematics were impres-sive, as were his later complex andcrucial calculations for the ManhattanProject and then for the H-bomb.

Von Neumann genuinely fearedthat wai* with the Soviet Union wouldfollow World War II, and he was re-ported to have advocated a "preven-tive war" against the Soviet Unionbefore the Soviets could developatomic weapons. He was a consultantfor the RAND Corporation, the thinktank that encouraged thinking aboutthe unthinkable, and he provided im-portant government and corporatecounsel. It was at RAND that vonNeumann studied and expanded the"prisoner's dilemma."

The dilemma is this: Two prisonersin solitary confinement are each of-fered a deal. If one testifies againstthe other, or "defects," he/she goesfree or wins and the other gets a stiffprison sentence ("sucker payoff). Ifboth testify, they get intermediatesentences. If neither testifies (they"cooperate"), they receive light sen-tences. The dilemma occurs becauseeach prisoner does better if he/shealone chooses to defect rather than tocooperate. But the punishment fortwo defections is more severe than forcooperation.

In connecting game theoi^ to East-West relations and the bomb, the au-thor invokes interesting people andevents and provides some tantalizinghints about how this reasoning mighthave been used at high levels. In onepossible "game," the players were theAllied and the Axis powers; the ac-tions both sides could choose werebuilding or not building the bomb (de-fecting or cooperating).

How good an analogj' is the pnson-er's dilemma game for the develop-ment and deployment of the bomb?How might it have been used by na-tional security advisers? These ques-tions are not answered. An Allied fail-ure to develop the bomb could haveresulted in losing World Wai* II (suck-er payoff). But the Allies could havelost even if nobociy built the bomb, sothe payoff matrix was not typical forthe game. In the second and perhapsmore standard application of thegame, the players were the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union, and de-fection meant dropping the bomb.

The arms race offers another appli-

44 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists