The Life Cycle of a Cyclotron

Making sense of Manhattan-Project mythology.

By Jack Bradner

Illustration by Em Bennet

Three yellow triangles imprinted on a black circle universally indicate nuclear radiation. On a haphazard walk across 114th Street, I doubled back to take a second and then a third look at the “FALLOUT SHELTER” designation some five stories beneath my room in Carman Hall. I had two initial, instinctive reactions. I was reminded of America’s nuclear history and at the same time recalled Fallout’s fictional postapocalyptic universe. My historical and fictional reactions initially seem contradictory, but I understand their connection by looking at each on its own.

As the original Manhattan Project site, Columbia University has a complicated relationship with nuclear proliferation. In the 1930s, Columbia Professor and Physicist John R. Dunning led the construction of one of America’s earliest atomic cyclotrons. Colloquially nicknamed ‘atom smashers,’ cyclotrons are particle accelerators that use an alternating electric field to increase a particle’s velocity. Some 20 years after the Manhattan project, Dunning’s cyclotron was decommissioned. Most of its parts were sent to the Smithsonian and what remained in Pupin’s basement was scrapped by Columbia in 2007. 

To me, the word ‘cyclotron’ seems almost laughably fictional. I recognize that science fiction adopted the “-tron” suffix (Avengers: Age of Ultron, “Megatron,” or the more on-the-nose Tron) from ‘electron,’ just as the cyclotron does. However, its Greek etymology (‘cyclo-’) calls back to ancient Greek cyclopes and their tempestuous forging. My classically-informed rereading makes the Cyclotron seem more like a sci-fi cyclops shooting lasers from its eye. But this fictional feeling isn’t my unique experience. Since the inception of Dunning’s cyclotron, Columbia students have felt this mythical instinct. 

In February 1987, Columbia College disciplined two students, Ken Hechtman, CC ’90, and Jeff Bankoff, SEAS ’90, for stealing uranium-238 from an abandoned physics lab in the basement of Pupin Hall. Uranium-238 is essentially the waste material of nuclear enrichment. During the Manhattan Project, Columbia researchers worked to separate uranium isotopes 238 and 235, the latter able to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. The principal offender in the heist, Hechtman, was also the founding leader of Allied Destructive Hackers of Columbia (ADHOC), a student group whose urbex and graffiti expeditions endeavored to incite chaos on campus—activites ironically contrary to what the group’s name might suggest. Hechtman and Bankoff executed their clandestine operation through Columbia’s tunnels, thieving a host of chemicals (including industrial-grade nitric acid) so that they could conduct chemistry experiments in their dorm room. 

At face value, the premises of Hechtman’s story seem fictional, framing him as some sort of alchemical wizard. In a 1987 article, Spectator dubbed him the “Uranium Thief,” which sounds more accurate for an evil supervillain antagonist in a sci-fi movie. In a subsequent article, students reflected this mythical attitude toward Hechtman’s actions, lamenting his expulsion as “tragedy” and calling him a “myth” and a “legend.” The author continues, “Hechtman’s legend here is a confusing blend of truth and fiction and it haunts the campus like a small, disheveled and pesky little ghost.” 

Looking at Hechtman as a ghost does make it easier to explain the rest of his life. His camouflaged journey across the Mojave Desert to see a U.S. stealth bomber in person seems impossible. Aside from Hechtman’s personal account, the only factual backing for his journey to the U.S. military base is documentation of his arrest in a Nevada county. In a similarly unbelievable manner, Hechtman was captured by the Taliban in 2001 after crossing into Afghanistan as a representative of the Montreal Mirror. After Hechtman spent six days in a Taliban jail, the Taliban released him unharmed. When explaining both cases, turning Hechtman into a “ghost” distances him from the laws of our day to day reality. It’s easier to feel comfortable with Hechtman’s escapades when he becomes a supernatural figure.

Like Hechtman’s peers from 1987 and 1989, contemporary students contribute to the mythologization of the tunnels and Columbia’s nuclear history. Among the plethora of campus ghost stories that circulate—such as the supposedly haunted chair that Gov. De Witt Clinton died in or Professor John D. Prince’s supernatural encounter with his dead colleague—one claims that a student had a lethal encounter with radioactive material while working on the Manhattan Project and that they still haunt the Columbia tunnels. As of 2007, students still venture into the tunnels. A 2008 New Yorker article includes anecdotes from Elizabeth Wade, BC ’08, a Barnard senior who recounted for the magazine her four years’ worth of journeys to the cyclotron. Quite the cliché, her urban explorations started on a “dark, stormy night.” After following graffiti clues to the cyclotron, she described it as “science fiction” and “mythical.”

However, I disagree with this sci-fi literary framing that the Spectator, Hechtman’s classmates, and Wade use to make sense of the cyclotron and tunnels as an aspect of their everyday lives. Overlaying Hechtman’s actions with a fictional narrative obfuscates whatever truth was there in the first place. Mythological labels create a fictional haze that makes historical events seem more like legends than fact. Similarly, placing an overly-fictitious literary label on history, especially history as impactful and relevant as the Manhattan Project nuclear program, doesn’t highlight the responsibility of the appropriate actors. We lose agency and accountability when fiction might overpower fact in our framing of the past. 

An overly realistic approach similarly mischaracterizes reality. Much of daily life doesn’t fit into a predetermined narrative. Most of Hechtman’s story can’t. But the absurdity doesn’t make it any less true or real, so imposing a strict narrative or abstract logic onto an incongruous reality can’t render the most accurate representation. In The Fragrance of Guava, magical realist pioneer Gabriel Garcia Marquez says that “disproportion is part of our reality too. Our reality is in itself out of all proportion.” Haruki Murakami said something similar in a 1994 interview with Wired: “I like to see the strangeness or weirdness in ordinary people or ordinary scenery or ordinary, everyday life.” Anomalies are an essential feature of reality. Understanding this reframes the way that I approach unexpected moments, like when I saw the “FALLOUT SHELTER” sign for the first time. I can enrich my understanding of the environment that I live in without occluding its history. 

Marquez shows how realist texts can’t capture a dynamic and evolving history: “[Realism] is a kind of premeditated literature that offers too static and exclusive reality. However good or bad they may be, they are books which finish on the last page.” To extend his comparison, magical realism doesn’t offer the same static rendering. Similarly, the collective Columbia history doesn’t have a last page, and neither does our reception of it. Now, I walk past the sign with growing indifference. This day by day integration into my daily life frames the way that I walk through Columbia and New York City as a dynamic process. A static understanding of the past can’t effectively convey that. Columbia’s graffiti-covered tunnels are an unfinished and ever-changing manuscript, much like the University’s history as a whole. Within this literary framing, magical realism recognizes the absurd as part of history’s vitality. Being able to think the same makes my interactions with Columbia, the city, and history more vibrant.