“Summary: In the Fall of 1979, while lecturing in Chicago, I was introduced to the nuclear scientist, Dr. Lloyd Quarterman, who had been awarded a certificate of appreciation by the U.S. Secretary of War for ‘work essential to the production of the Atomic Bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II. I found, on meeting this remarkable gentleman, that his work in this field was only the beginning of his achievements, though he spoke of all he had done with great modesty and restraint. He had worked with some of the world’s greatest scientists, including Einstein, when he was at Columbia University, New York. He went on to the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to monitor the delicate mixing of highly reactive and toxic chemical agents, many of which were radioactive, to manipulate chemicals in the development of entirely new compounds, and to devise what, in technical terms, is known as ‘the diamond window.’ He also initiated work on ‘synthetic blood’ fifteen years ago, work which, had he been allowed to complete it, might have been one of America’s major medical accomplishments.” “Mr. Edward Willet, who introduced me to Dr. Quarterman, taped our conversations and I have decided to publish fragments from these, linked by a brief commentary.” “Van Sertima: The atom, I understand, was split right here in Chicago. But that, I presume—those secret beginnings—you cannot talk about.” “Quarterman: Wait a minute. You are talking about two different things. We split the atom in the East. We were working there on an Atomic Bomb. But the world’s first nuclear reactor, which used the atom-splitting process in a peaceful way, was set up here in Chicago. It was under an Italian scientist, Enrico Fermi. In 1948 I did all my quantum mechanics under him.” “Van Sertima: You are one of the few surviving scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project—the code-name for Atom Bomb research. But there were other black scientists, I suppose…” “Quarterman: Yes, there were six of us.” “Due to his oath of secrecy, Dr. Quarterman could not discuss in any further detail what he had contributed to the development of the Bomb and his later work on uranium, which laid the foundation for the establishment of a new nuclear research facility. We therefore avoided this subject and went on to talk about his work at the Argonne National Laboratory, which he joined on July 1, 1946.” “Apart from being a fluoride chemist and a radioactive chemist, Dr. Quarterman is a spectroscopist. A spectrosopist is like a man peering into the depths of the universe with a dozen eyes or windows. With these marvelously revealing scopes, he can look through solutions or through various spectra or spheres into the living interaction or vibration of chemical or molecular or gaseous species. He can study the composition of elements in our universe that are either invisible or elusive or obscure to us. Sometimes he needs to make a new kind of eye or a new kind of window in order to observe and determine these things with greater precision. It is for this reason that Quarterman devised a new window, which came to be known as ‘the diamond window.’” “Quarterman: I made a diamond cell. The windows were of diamonds. It was a very small window—one eighth of an inch. The reason why they were one eighth of an inch was because I couldn’t get the money to buy bigger windows. These small diamonds cost one thousand dollar apiece and I needed two for a window. Now the reasons I wanted this diamond-window cell is that I wanted to study something in a solution that was too corrosive for other types of windows. Something so corrosive that it would eat up glass or any other kind of container if one tried to use it as a window.” “Van Sertima: And what is that?” “Quarterman: Hydrogen fluoride. This happens to be one of the world’s simplest compounds. It is made up of two atoms—hydrogen, which is number one atom, and fluorine, the seventh element in the atomic table. It has one bond… But as a molecule it is complex, in that the study of it requires the understanding of many types of interbonding. It is the world’s greatest solvent. All metals known to man dissolve in hydrogen fluoride. Even platinum forms several platinum fluorides and there are silver fluorides, gold fluorides. But diamond happens to be the one thing that dissolves extremely slow, slower than any other element.” “Van Sertima: What could you study by using this window?” “Quarterman: If you want to study the X-ray, the UV (Ultraviolet) region, the Raman spectrum of a compound, it is wonderful to dissolve the compound in HF (hydrogen fluoride) and make a cell and shine your electro-magnetic beam through the solution and look at the vibrations of the molecules in the solution, and from these vibrations you can understand the structures.” “Van Sertima: Can you actually see molecules vibrating in the solution?” “Quarterman: Yes. If you shine an ultra-violet beam or an X-ray beam through a solution, you can pick up vibrations of the molecules in the solution. Every molecule has a different vibration. Imagine a molecule with two balls. If the two balls are the same size, they can vibrate up and down because they’re joined together. Now that’s just a simple molecule. We only have one molecule that is like this and that is the helium molecule. That’s the only molecule that has two atoms. All the others have more, many more. Now you take a third atom. It will come in on the side and look like a triangle. If you take this tri-molecule and it has a big ball on the side, that thing is going to vibrate differently from three of them of the same size. But I was not just looking at molecules. I was also involved in the invention of molecules.” “Van Sertima: Can you play around with molecules the way biochemists are playing around now with genes?” “Quarterman: That’s my specialty. That’s what the game is all about. I can pull off an atom down here and put another atom on here and this would give me different vibrations. Inventing molecules is making new compounds. Making zeon difluroide, which we talked about earlier, is an example of this.” “Van Sertima: Around what time did you invent the diamond window?” “Quarterman: The diamond window was invented around 1967. It developed over a long period of time, because we tried all different kinds of windows and this was the window that worked. By the way I don’t call it an invention but ‘a first discovery trial’ because no one else did it before.” “Van Sertima: I have also heard of your early research probes into the development of ‘synthetic blood.’ I have been reading a newspaper report on this. It has come into the news because the Japanese used some form of synthetic blood on an American about a month ago and this has generated a lot of interest in the matter. I know that this is something that has not yet been perfected, so I was wondering in what sense, perhaps, the Japanese process might differ from the one you were working in…” “Quarterman: I want to say that my process never got off the ground. I ran into socio-political problems. They said that they didn’t have a budget for it. I presented papers fifteen years ago on this and I have copies of those papers presented to my superiors. But they threw it on the shelf…” “Our interview, however, did not end on a sour note, although Dr. Quarterman seemed grieved at the loss of the opportunity to work on this project, which he felt might have saved thousands of lives. His great excitement could not be dimmed by any disappointment. It was the excitement of the man of science who may suffer, but who will always rise above, the limitations of his place and time. ‘We are in an age of discovery,’ says Quarterman, with an almost boyish enthusiasm, ‘we live in the world of the unknown. That’s the only place to live.’” Article by Ivan Van Sertima title “Dr. Lloyd Quarterman—Nuclear Scientist: An interview with Ivan Van Sertima” Book title “Blacks in Science: ancient and modern” Edited by Ivan Van Sertima Pages 266 & 267
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 01:37:11 +0000
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