Edward Condon - Early Career

Early Career

Condon taught briefly at Columbia University and was associate professor of physics at Princeton University from 1928 to 1937, except for a year at the University of Minnesota. With Philip M. Morse, he wrote Quantum Mechanics, the first English-language text on the subject in 1929. With G.H. Shortley, he wrote the Theory of Atomic Spectra, "a bible on the subject from the moment of its 1935 publication".

He was associate director of research at the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, beginning in 1937, where he established research programs in nuclear physics, solid-state physics, and mass spectroscopy. He then headed the company's research on microwave radar development. He also worked on the equipment used to isolate uranium for use in atomic bombs. He served as a consultant to the National Defense Research Committee during World War II and helped organize MIT's Radiation Laboratory.

In 1943, Condon joined the Manhattan Project. Within six weeks, he resigned as a result of conflicts about security with General Leslie R. Groves, the project's military leader. General Groves had objected when Condon's superior J. Robert Oppenheimer held a discussion with the director of the project's Metallurgical Lab at the University of Chicago. In his resignation letter, he explained:

The thing which upsets me the most is the extraordinary close security policy....I do not feel qualified to question the wisdom of this since I am totally unaware of the extent of enemy espionage and sabotage activities. I only want to say that in my case I found that the extreme concern with security was morbidly depressing--especially the discussion about censoring mail and telephone calls.

From August 1943 to February 1945, Condon worked as a part-time consultant at Berkeley on the separation of U-235 and U-238. Condon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1944. Following the war, Condon played a leading role in organizing scientists to lobby for civilian control of atomic energy rather than military control under strict security. He worked as science adviser to Senator Brian McMahon, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy, which wrote the McMahon-Douglas Act, enacted in August 1946, that created the Atomic Energy Commission, placing atomic energy under civilian control. Adopting an internationalist viewpoint, Condon favored international scientific cooperation and joined the American-Soviet Science Society.