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The passage from an AIP oral history interview with Robert Furman reads: Furman: We were taught that matter and energy were one, all the same — in somewhat greater detail than that. That kind teaching was not in the old texts. So this to Groves was a big secret. He kept a physics book in his safe and he lent it to me. But I always had to put it back in the safe. He didn't realize that I had physics books at home. Regardless, I had to bone up on physics so that I could talk to the scientists that I was working with. I was being instructed by Dr. Vannevar Bush. The scientists were asked to educate me. Dr. Richard Tolman, for instance, took me out in a sailboat from Woods Hole Massachusetts, and when we got far from shore, he looked all around and began educating me in the science behind the nuclear bomb project.

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The passage from an AIP oral history interview with Robert Furman reads: Furman: We were taught that matter and energy were one, all the same — in somewhat greater detail than that. That kind teaching was not in the old texts. So this to Groves was a big secret. He kept a physics book in his safe and he lent it to me. But I always had to put it back in the safe. He didn't realize that I had physics books at home. Regardless, I had to bone up on physics so that I could talk to the scientists that I was working with. I was being instructed by Dr. Vannevar Bush. The scientists were asked to educate me. Dr. Richard Tolman, for instance, took me out in a sailboat from Woods Hole Massachusetts, and when we got far from shore, he looked all around and began educating me in the science behind the nuclear bomb project.
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Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 16:42:59 UTC Robert McNees
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Anyway, as I mentioned way back at the beginning of this thread, Tolman was science advisor to General Leslie Groves during WWII. He often had to help military and intelligence personnel get up to speed on scientific issues related to the Manhattan Project.
Tolman would take these folks out on his sailboat, far from shore. Only then, when he could be sure that no one was around to overhear, would be begin to teach them the physics behind the atomic bomb.
https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/25565

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