two of the greatest physicists of a generation. Weisskopf was one of the best mathematical physicists of his time and in many ways the senior leader in the physics community. He was also an immensely kind, humanistic, and generous man. Morrison was one of the dying breed of general scientists who saw the whole field and was greatly respected among scientists, and an incredibly talented teacher who was much admired by his students.

Thank you for posting this great talk. Many points that need reflection even today.

MIT helped build the bomb, but can they figure out how to record audio so that it doesn't dropout or fuzzout?

They said it all, except that the continuing wars maximised cruelty and cost to their own people. MAD idiocy remains the constant psychopathology.

As a physicist, though not distinguished as was Prof Weisskopf, I may criticize my fellow scientists of that day in the hope of influencing those of the present: I have not watch all of the address by Weisskopf because after only a few minute (by time 10:17) he made a grievous error. It was especially grievous because he should have known better and failed the opportunity to have influenced others more properly. His error was to state that it was the incineration of two population centers in Japan that ended WW2. By 1985, when Weisskopf spoke at MIT, the documentary evidence was available and entirely persuasive that Japan was ready to surrender well before the nuclear holocaust. Only US agreement to allow Emperor Hirohito to continue as the revered, symbolic and religious leader of Japan was awaited. The Japanese did not want to have Russian forces invade Japan. The American leaders knew this. There was a powerful faction that insisted Hirohito be treated as a war criminal, no matter how difficulty this would make the subsequent occupation. President Truman himself was eager to use the bombs in order to show Premier Stalin how devastating they were. Scientists who work for governments have no control over their work product. They most often have reason to regret the decision to turn their moral judgment over to politicians. Fritz Haber learned this after his poison gas was used during WW1. Seventy scientists who tried to halt work on the "atomic" bomb learned this lesson too late, when their efforts to petition President Truman were ignored in the summer of 1945. Others who have moral conflicts with the US government learn that government agencies cannot be trusted even to abide by the Constitution. Edward Snowden learned the hard way. He was very lucky to have avoided a long prison sentence in the US. Other whistle blowers, Bradley Mannng for example, were not so lucky.