Bernard Vonnegut: The Rainmaker

"Bernard Vonnegut: The Rainmaker" is a remembrance of Vonnegut's brother Bernard, who had died the previous April. It was published in the New York Times Magazine on January 4, 1998 as part of the fourth annual edition of "The Lives They Lived", which looked at important, often less recognized, figures who had died the previous year. It also included a section about Allen Ginsberg.

Summary

General Electric Research Laboratory

Bernard Vonnegut, an expert in various forms of meteorological phenomena, discovered fifty years earlier a cloud-seeding method involving silver-iodide particles still used to control drought. In addition to original sin, there is also original virtue, which Bernard possessed. He was always "merrily appreciative of all the physical universe was doing", and even in childhood it was clear that he was gifted in the sciences, playful with whatever ordinary materials were available. Much of his research involved the ancient four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water. From his time at the General Electric Research Laboratory to Arthur D. Little and finally teaching at SUNY Albany, Bernard "made his reputation by experimenting simply and cheaply".

Kind, reasonable, and hilarious, his life was devoted to "playing jokes on Mother Nature" to see how she would respond. Both brothers were home in Indianapolis when they learned of the bombing of Hiroshima. Bernard was horrified that scientific experiments similar to his own had so change the world. Vonnegut learned from his reaction that "not all new knowledge is necessarily good", an uncommon belief among scientists. In a speech at M.I.T., he proposed, with Bernard's approval, the creation of a scientific Hippocratic oath, promising to do no harm. Those in attendance, whose job prospects often involved developing military applications, were not interested. Acknowledging that Bernard's cloud-seeding experiments could have potentially flooded the Hudson Valley instead filling reservoirs, at least "it was only water".