Manhattan project

The Manhattan Project was the result of an enormous collaborative effort between the U.S. government and the industrial and scientific sectors during World War II. Here is a brief summary of the Anglo-American effort to develop an atomic bomb during its World War II and its legacies today. Preliminary Organization The story of the Manhattan Project began in 1938, when German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann inadvertently Nevertheless, initial research moved slowly until the spring of 1941, when the MAUD Committee (essentially the British equivalent to the Uranium Committee) issued Preliminary Research Prior to the formal creation of the Manhattan Project, atomic research was ongoing at a number of universities around the United States. At the “Rad Lab” (Radiation Laboratory) at , offering another possible path to the bomb. Meanwhile, at Columbia University, a team of scientists, including Forming the Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was officially created on August 13, 1942. The name itself, “Manhattan Project,” is commonly thought to be a misnomer, but its first offices were actually in Manhattan, at 270 Broadway. Its first major funding came in December, when President Roosevelt ordered an initial allotment of $500 million. The headquarters of the project would soon be moved to Washington, D.C., while numerous project sites were scattered across the country. Project Sites The Manhattan Project’s weapons research laboratory was located at Another important...

A mushroom cloud is one of the most terrifying images imaginable for billions of people around the world who still live under the specter of a nuclear war, but for many others, it was the fulfillment of one of the most consequential research efforts in human history: the Manhattan Project. Under the codename Manhattan Project, the US effort in World War II to beat Nazi Germany to an atomic weapon had a complicated and unquestionably terrible legacy. This is especially true for the people of Japan, the only nation that has ever suffered a nuclear attack. While many notable scientists involved in the Manhattan Project would experience anguish, guilt, and horror over the consequences of their work, others saw the atomic bomb — and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that accompanied it — as the only way to secure lasting peace in the world. No matter one's ultimate position on the issue of the atomic bombs that ended the Second World War, there is no question that few research projects have proven as consequential for human history as the Manhattan Project. Early Atomic Theory The idea of an indivisible unit of matter is an ancient idea going back to some of the earliest Greek and Indian texts on record, but some of the first to describe the concept ofthe atom were the ancient Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus, in the fifth century BCE. The name atom itself comes from the ancient Greek word atomos, which roughly means "uncuttable", and for about three...