Robert Marshak discusses his work on meson theory in the context of his work with the Federation of American Scientists

Marshak:

No, no, that’s the point. This is part of the story. It’s a sort of amusing story. You see, by that time, by the end of April 1947, before the Shelter Island Conference, I had been elected chairman of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) (in the early days FAS was Federation of Atomic Scientists, but the change took place at about that time) So I was now being brought into political discussions on atomic energy and so on. And towards the end of June 1947, President Hutchins of the University of Chicago, who was very interested in these matters, had arranged a little conference at Lake Geneva in Wisconsin - for scientists and social scientists - to discuss international control of atomic energy. The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Einstein and Szilard, had been very much involved in these matters. Einstein was not there. Szilard was there and some other members of the Emergency Committee — Harrison Brown.

They were sort of a small elite committee working more or less in parallel with the big mass movement of the Federation — the younger scientists, say — of the Federation of American Scientists which had about 3000 members. Anyway, as the newly-elected chairman, I was invited to attend that little conference and Phil Morrison was on the same train with me from Chicago to Lake Geneva. He said to me...I guess he had heard about the Shelter Island Conference, probably Bethe had reported about it at Cornell, because the Lake Geneva meeting was only two or three weeks later. But Morrison said, "You know, there’s a very interesting article in Nature by Lattes, Muirhead, Occhialini and Powell. There seems to be another meson: there are a couple of photographs showing there’s another meson." And when I heard this, I jumped. I said, "My God, this must be the second meson I was talking about at Shelter Island." And perhaps I explained to him what I had said. I’m not sure that he really had heard about the two-meson theory. I don’t think there was a library at Lake Geneva, but a few days later, as soon as I got back to Rochester, I got hold of the latest issue of Nature, which had just arrived. The issue was dated earlier — May 24 — than the Shelter Island conference but in those days they were not using air mail to send journals. So that issue certainly reached the United States later...Well, I believe it reached the United States after the Shelter Island Conference. [arrived at U. of Rochester library, June 13, 1947).

Weiner:

Shelter Island was June 2nd through the 4th, and the publication date of Nature is May 24th, so even with air mail, it was close.

Marshak:

Well, certainly nobody knew about it at the Shelter Island Conference, absolutely no one. Otherwise, it would have been brought up by Rossi or Oppenheimer, and I never would have had to suggest it. Everyone will fully confirm this. I don’t think there’s any question about that. My impression is that it came by sea mail, and it took two or three weeks, arriving — in libraries in the middle of June; and Morrison saw it just before he left Cornell. It sort of jibes. We could check the Lake Geneva dates, which were towards the end of June. [June 18–21, l987] So, as soon as I got back, I found the two photographs, and I was immediately convinced that I had hit the jackpot! I had decided when I left the Shelter Island Conference that I ought to write something up on the two-meson hypothesis — a little note — but I had been sidetracked by atomic politics and the Lake Geneva meeting. But, as soon as I got back from that meeting, I decided that the FAS be damned, I was going to get that paper written up. So I worked on it and visited the General Electric Research Lab where Hans Bethe was a consultant for the second summer.