Bertrand Goldschmidt was one of only three Frenchmen who worked on the Manhattan Project. He was a chemist who helped devise ways to purify plutonium. The American Archive of Public Broadcasting has a video interview with him. It's a fascinating look at the earliest days of fission. The interview itself is raw and a little irritating to watch because the interviewer frequently prompts responses and repeats his questions. Here is a quote worth sharing: "You can't understand the Bikini test in considering what today's attitude of the public toward the bomb. The best proof is that I was invited because there was two marshals for each country of the Security Council invited. And when I came back to France, I was famous for three months because I had seen an atomic explosion. I was invited to lunch and dinner by people I'd never heard or seen before simply because I had been at Bikini. And it was a tremendous happening. There wasn't at all the revulsion there is against the bomb today. And I gave a lecture on Bikini, the only time in my life, where people had to stay out, at the Sorbonne, because there were so many people attending. And one can't imagine that today where there is — the fact that the American's test in Nevada is considered a little bit as a crime against humanity." You can see the whole video here: americanarchive.org/catalog/…