Beginning and End

Pupin Physics Laboratory, Columbia University

Shinran Shonin, New York Buddhist Church

This was an odd coincidence.  While on the Columbia campus on Sunday I took a picture of the Pupin Physics Laboratory.  It is home to the physics department and one of the more historically important buildings on campus.  Some early advances in electronic computing were done there, the laser was invented there, the heat-resistant tiles used on the space shuttle were developed in this building, and, probably most importantly, this is where the Manhattan Project began.

I guess the Manhattan Project was in the aether as William Broad had a great article in today's paper about "Why They Called it the Manhattan Project".  It was in the basement of Pupin that physicists Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and others demonstrated in early 1939 that nuclear fission, the splitting of the uranium atom, takes place when uranium is bombarded with neutrons.  It is also where Fermi began to work out how a chain reaction might occur and how that chain reaction might be controlled.

A few blocks away from the Columbia campus is the New York Buddhist Church.  Shinran Shonin, a monk and the founder of the Jodu Shinsu Sect of Buddhism, is depicted in the statue.  The statue was about a mile from where the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima.  Having survived the blast the statue was brought to New York in 1955 as "a testimonial to the atomic bomb devastation and a symbol of lasting hope for world peace."

Comments

[Marie C.]

This is a very interesting article. They should tour that statue around the country.