Operation Trinity and Manhattan Project
16 Jul 1945
Contributor: C. Peter Chen
ww2dbaseManhattan Project
ww2dbaseAs recently as 1930, even prominent physicists such as Ernest Rutherford and Albert Einstein knew there were tremendous amounts of energy inside of atoms, but saw no way to release it. Things changed quickly, however, during the 1930s. In 1932, Sir John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton were able to cause a nuclear reaction for the first time by using artificially accelerated particles, and then in 1934, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Enrico Fermi separately induced artificial radioactivity by bombarding atoms with alpha particles and neutrons, respectively. Finally, in Dec 1938, based on the work of Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch published their theory of the potential of splitting uranium atoms. Coupled with the possibility of a chain reaction for a tremendous amount of energy release, people began to realize that artificially induced nuclear fission could be used as a powerful weapon.
ww2dbaseOn 2 Aug 1939, Hungarian Jewish refugee in the United States Leó Szilárd co-authored a letter with Albert Einstein, urging President Franklin Roosevelt to allocate sufficient funding for atomic research due to the potential application as a weapon. The letter reached Roosevelt's desk in Sep, who agreed with the scientists' urging, and authorized the creation of the Uranium Committee under National Bureau of Standards chief Lyman Briggs, which began research programs at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, United States in 1939. In 1940, the Uranium Committee was absorbed into the larger National Defense Research Committee. Nevertheless, progress was slow, partly due to the low sense of urgency as the United States had not yet entered the war.
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