Born in Philadelphia, on March 14, 1909, Serber earned a doctorate in physics at the University of Wisconsin in 1934. After working with Oppenheimer at Berkeley, became an associate professor at the University of Illinois. Serber joined his friend and mentor to work on the Manhattan Project.
In April 1943, when scientists were first gathering at Los Alamos, Serber presented a series of lectures which summarized all that was known at the time about designing and building an atomic bomb. His notes for those introductory sessions
