Everybody's Secret

The first atomic bomb released almost as many atom books as neutrons. Few were any good. But a recent book, Explaining the Atom, by Professor Selig Hecht of Columbia University (Viking Press, $2.75) actually comes close to its claim of making "the atom and its energy comprehensible to the intelligent layman."

Dr. Hecht tells how the scientists discovered that atoms are made up of smaller particles, including the notorious neutron, which can slip into an atom's nucleus. Once Dr. Hecht has the reader aware of neutrons, he finds it easy to explain how some atoms can be disrupted by neutron infiltration, loosing a gush of energy.

With the same simplicity, he explains the main political fact about The Bomb: that no "atomic secret" exists. "Atomic energy," he says, "was known and evaluated in 1900; the basic equation was written in 1905. Its meaning . . . has come slowly with each new discovery. . . . If there were a secret, we gave it away in

July 1945. It is that a chain reaction is possible and that it can be used to make a bomb. . . . Can another country make an atomic bomb? Of course it can. . . . The real secret is that there is no basic secret."

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