Study in Detection

Before it could be withdrawn, the U.S. last week latched onto the U.S.S.R.'s tentative acceptance of President Eisenhower's offer of joint technical studies on the feasibility of stopping nuclear tests. President Eisenhower sped off a "Dear Mr. Chairman" letter to the Kremlin's Khrushchev, proposed that delegations of Western and Communist scientists meet in Geneva next month to discuss ways and means of detecting nuclear explosions. The scientists should aim for an initial progress report in 30 days, a final report in 60 days, wrote Ike, and the U.S. and U.S.S.R. should keep the U.N. fully informed of progress. Then the President nominated three topflight U.S. scientists to represent the U.S. The three: Physicist Ernest 0. Lawrence, director of the University of California's Radiation Laboratory; Bell Telephone Laboratories' Executive Vice President Dr. James Brown Fisk; Caltech Physicist Robert F. Bacher, onetime member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

"We assume," wrote the President, "that the experts on the side of the Soviet Union would be similarly chosen on the basis of special competence so as to assure that we get scientific, not political, conclusions."

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