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=================== SLIDE 1
TThe Manhattan
Project
A Torch Club Presentation
By:
Tom Bitner
April 16, 2009
The title of my presentation is The Manhattan Project. When I told one of my friends sitting here
in the audience the title he pointed out to me that the only way to present a Manhattan is with
whiskey, vermouth, bitters and a cherry........................................I’ll take him to the bar as soon
as I’m finished talking!
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=================== SLIDE 2
Born out of a small research program that began in 1939 in the U.S. Army’s Corps of Engineers office on
the 18th floor at 270 Broadway in Manhattan, the Manhattan Project brought together the cream of the
world’s scientific community and the military to create and perfect a weapon more powerful than the
world had ever known.
=================== SLIDE 3
The project would eventually employ more than 130,000 people at a cost of over $2 billion ($29 billion in
2007) – and the operation, spread across the entire USA, was conducted under an unprecedented shroud
of secrecy!1 The project was formally established on Aug. 13, 1942 and was abolished almost exactly five
years later in Aug. of 1947 after detonating two nuclear devices, Little Boy and Fat Man, on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, in Japan in Aug. of 1945. Japan surrendered two days after the issuing of the second
device!
=================== SLIDE 4
The impetus that precipitated this highly focused quest for applications of scientific theory, however, was
events that took place three years prior!
In March of 1939, Germany again violated the Versailles Treaty and invaded and subsequently
occupied Czechoslovakia. Later that year they continued their aggression with the invasion of
Poland, signaling the beginning of World War II. Eventually, as the German Third Reich became
more bellicose, the free world would unite and organize to subdue the Nazis scourge.
1
Cynthia C. Kelly, “The Manhattan Project”
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=================== SLIDE 5
The technology that prevailed at the onset and throughout most of the war, however, was not
much different than that that existed at the close of world war I. There were no major
advancements in weaponry as there were at the onset of WWI. The tanks were better armed, the
automatic weapons were faster and more efficient, the planes could fly faster and higher and carry
heavier loads but the basic technology of war remained unchanged.
=================== SLIDE 6
Werner von Braun
V2 Rocket
Both sides, however, were in a mode that was searching for a superior weapon. A weapon or
weapons that could bring the war to a rapid end in their respective favor! Wernher von Braun had
developed the V2 rocket, but with over 5000 produced and only 1100 subsequently reaching
London, this was not the answer!
=================== SLIDE 7
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Werner Heisenberg
The allied and axis powers were aware of the potential destructive force of the atom and would
both become involved in research aimed at creating a super weapon! The scientific leaders
Werner Heisenberg in Germany and J. Robert Oppenheimer in the US were seeking a means of
using atomic fission to release large amounts of energy that could be focused into a new allpowerful weapon.
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By 1941, the Germans were leading the race for the atomic bomb. They had a heavy-water plant,
high-grade uranium compounds, a nearly complete cyclotron, capable scientists and engineers,
and one of the best chemical engineering industries in the world.
Even before America’s entry into the war, Roosevelt’s research and development czars, Vannevar
Bush and James Conant, worried that Germany had a six month start and Hitler’s scientists would
rescue Germany in the eleventh hour with an atomic bomb! The British scientist, James
Chadwick, told American officials that he considered Heisenberg “the most dangerous possible
German in the field because of his brain power…..”2
=================== SLIDE 8
\
Bethe
Bohr
Einstein
Teller
Meitner
Stern
Fermi
Wigner
Szilard
Weisskopf
Ironically, and fortunately, many of the world’s most brilliant scientists, who had the ability to
develop nuclear fission, were driven out of Germany and Europe by the Nazi anti-Jewish
mentality. Fittingly, such refugees from facism helped to assure that the Allies rather than the
Nazis first developed the atom bomb!3 In the US a massive effort to assemble the world’s top
scientists and have them focus on using nuclear fission to create a powerful explosive device was
being, under the most secure and top secret conditions, executed and code named The Manhattan
Project. It was probably one of the most concentrated and highly intensive scientific projects ever
undertaken by mankind!
After reading a number of books relating to the Manhattan Project and the development of
nuclear energy I became interested in the previous scientific contributions that were made through
the ages, by a host of scientists, that allowed The Manhattan Project to be a reality and,
ultimately, the scientists that were assembled to execute this undertaking. The crux of my
presentation tonight is to share with you a review of the historical developments that made the
Manhattan Project possible.
2
3
Thomas Powers: “Heisenberg’s War”
Walter Isaacson, “Einstein, His Life and Universe”
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Antoine Henri Becquerel
1852-1908
In 1896, while investigating phosphorescence in uranium, Henri Becquerel, the Parisian Nobel
Prize winner, accidentally discovered radioactivity. Becquerel's earliest work was concerned with
the plane polarization of light, with the phenomenon of phosphorescence and with the absorption
of light by crystals (his doctorate thesis).
=================== SLIDE 10
Investigating the work of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who developed the x-ray, Becquerel
wrapped a fluorescent substance, potassium uranyl sulfate, in photographic plates and black
material in preparation for an experiment requiring bright sunlight. However, prior to actually
performing the experiment, Becquerel found that the photographic plates were fully exposed. The
phenomenon became known as Becquerel radiation and led Becquerel to investigate the
spontaneous emission of nuclear radiation.4
" I shall particularly insist on the following fact, which appears to me very important and quite outside
the range of phenomena one might expect to observe. The same crystalline lamellas5 ... shielded from
excitation by incident radiation and kept in darkness , still produce the same photographic images." 6
4
www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/becquerel-bio.html
5 A thin plate or scale of anything, as a thin scale growing from the petals of certain flowers; or one of the thin plates
or scales of which certain shells are composed. [1913 Webster] Lamellar
6 www.calstatela.edu/faculty/kaniol/f2000_lect_nuclphys/lect1/becquerel.htm
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=================== SLIDE 11
Marie Curie
Pierre Curie
1867-1934
1859-1906
At the end of the 19th century, a number of discoveries were made in physics which paved the
way for the breakthrough of modern physics and led to the revolutionary technical development
that is continually changing our daily lives. Nobel Prize honorees Marie Curie and her husband
Pierre working in a leaky wooden shed in France, processed a ton of pitchblende7, laboriously
isolating from it a fraction of a gram of pure radium.
=================== SLIDE 12
RADIUM
Marie and Pierre Curie
Discoverer
Discovered at
France
Discovery date
26.12.1898
Origin of name
From the Latin word "radius" meaning "ray"
Radium was discovered in 1898 by Marie and
Pierre Curie in pitchblende (or uraninite) from
North Bohemia. The element was isolated in
1911 by Mme. Curie and Debierne by the
electrolysis of a solution of pure radium
chloride, employing a mercury cathode. On
distillation in an atmosphere of hydrogen this
amalgam yielded the pure metal.
Description
Marie and Pierre shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with Becquerel for the discovery of
radioactive elements. The citation was, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have
rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri
Becquerel."8 Marie Curie was the first female recipient of a Nobel Prize; it was the first time a
woman had ever won a Nobel. In 1911, Curie became the first and only woman to win a second
Nobel Prize. She earned, on her own, the award in chemistry for isolating pure radium.
The Curie, a unit of radioactivity, was named in honor of Pierre!
7
8
Pitchblende is UO2 uranite, the ore containing uranium and radium
www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/curie/
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=================== SLIDE 13
2
E=MC
Albert Einstein
1879-1955
German born Albert Einstein, probably provided one of the most important concepts that led
others to envision and develop nuclear fission.
2
In 1905 he conceived of the equation E=MC which equates energy to mass via a universal
constant, the speed of light! Actually, mass can be viewed as frozen energy! Einstein suggested
that it might be possible to test his theory about the equation using radium, an ounce of which, as
Marie Curie had discovered not long before, continuously emits 4,000 calories of heat per hour.
Einstein believed that radium was constantly converting part of its mass to energy exactly as his
equation specified. He was eventually proved correct!
=================== SLIDE 14
So! One gram of mass — approximately the mass of a U.S. dollar bill — is equivalent to the
following amounts o f energy:9 The most significant being kilowatt hours!
89.9 terajoules
24.9 million kilowatt-hours
21.5 billion kilocalories
21.5 kilatons of TNT
85.2 billion BTUs
(my electrical use for 1800 yrs!)
=================== SLIDE 15
I’m always amazed at how Einstein could have conceived of this equation. Does anyone know?
9
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence
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Gary Larson Knows!
By 1909, Einstein was recognized throughout German-speaking Europe as a leading scientific
thinker. In quick succession he held professorships at the German University of Prague and at the
Zurich Polytechnic. In 1914 he advanced to the most prestigious and best-paying post that a
theoretical physicist could hold in central Europe: professor at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft in
Berlin. Although Einstein held a cross-appointment at the University of Berlin, from this time on
he never again taught regular university courses. Einstein remained on the staff at Berlin until
1933. He renounced his citizenship when the Nazis confiscated his property and fired him as the
director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute because he was a Jew. He then emigrated to America to take
the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton University.
Einstein had been a devout and life-long pacifist, urging people of the world to refuse military
service. He changed his mind, however, when he saw what the Nazi state was doing to his people
and the European continent!
His life work sought to explain the relativity of natural forces10 and he received the Nobel Prize
for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect!
He played no major role in the Manhattan Project and after the war worked to control nuclear
proliferation!
=================== SLIDE 16
------------------------------- nuclear fission -------------------------------As I am going to frequently use the phrase nuclear fission I’d like to clarify or refresh to you the
meaning of the term nuclear fission!
When a nucleus fissions, it splits into several smaller fragments. These fragments, or
fission products, are about equal to half the original mass. Two or three neutrons are also
emitted. The sum of the masses of these fragments is less than the original mass. This
'missing' mass (about 0.1 percent of the original mass) has been converted into energy
10
Cynthia C. Kelly, “The Manhattan Project”
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according to Einstein's equation. Fission can occur when a nucleus of a heavy atom
captures a neutron, or it can happen spontaneously.11
Fission, in nuclear reaction vessels called reactors, is controlled by means of moderators
such as graphite or heavy water which absorb nuetrons thereby stifiling the chain reaction.
Nuclear explosive devices, on the other hand, allow the chain reaction to prevail!
=================== SLIDE 17
James Chadwick
The Atom
1891-1974
In 1932 James Chadwick discovered the neutron.
Until 1932 the atom was thought to consist of a positively charged nucleus, containing protons
circled by negatively charged electrons equal in number to the protons in the nucleus. The number
of protons determined the element's atomic number and its’ position on the periodic table.
Hydrogen, with one proton, came first and uranium, with ninety-two protons, last on the periodic
table.
=================== SLIDE 18
This simple scheme became more complicated when chemists discovered that many elements
existed at different masses or weights even while displaying identical chemical properties. It was
Chadwick's discovery of the neutron in 1932, while working with Ernest Rutherford in the
Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge England, that explained this mystery12 and won him the
Nobel Prize in 1935. The neutron, then, became one of the essential concepts in understanding
fission.
From 1943 to 1946, Chadwick, was key in connecting British Tube Alloys (Britain’s A-Bomb
project) scientists with the Manhattan Project. He was close with the Manhattan Project's leader
11
12
www.atomicarchive.com/Fission/Fission1.shtml
www.atomicarchive.com/History/mp/p1s1.shtml
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General Leslie Groves, and worked with British counterparts to determine that Americans had
overestimated the amount of 235U needed to achieve a chain reaction (critical mass)13. Chadwick
and many of Britain's other leading physicists joined to form 'the Maud Committee'14, and
produced a report saying that a nuclear bomb could be ready by 1943 .
=================== SLIDE 19
Leo Szilard
1898-1964
In 1933 Leo Szilard, a Hungarian scientist, conceived of a chain reaction:
….
Szilard was forced to flee Hungary to London to escape the Nazi persecution. Probably the first
scientist to think seriously of building atomic bombs, Szilard was struck, after reading an article
by Ernest Rutherford, by the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction on September 12, 1933, while
he was waiting for a red light, in the rain, in London. That if an element, bombarded with one
neutron, gave off two neutrons during the splitting process, a chain reaction would result!15 The
following year he filed for a patent for the concept!
In 1938 he moved to New York City, in anticipation of the outbreak of World War II
Szilard was profoundly disturbed by the lack of American action. If atomic bombs were possible,
as he believed they were, Nazi Germany might gain an unbeatable lead in developing them. It was
especially troubling that Germany had stopped the sale of uranium ore from occupied
Czechoslovakia!
=================== SLIDE 20
13
14
critical mass is the smallest amount of fissionable material needed to sustain a nuclear chain reaction
the Maud committee was the beginning of the British atomic bomb project, before they joined forces with the USA
15www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Le%C3%B3-Szil%C3%A1rd
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Fermi’s atomic pile
Enrico Fermi
1901-1954
In 1934 in Chicago Enrico Fermi, an Italian immigrant, produced the first controlled nuclear
fission. Not realizing he had split the atom, Fermi announced what he thought were elements
beyond uranium.16
He evolved the beta-decay theory, coalescing previous work on radiation theory with Pauli’s idea
of the neutrino. Fermi demonstrated that nuclear transformation occurs in almost every element
subjected to neutron bombardment. This work led to the discovery of slow neutrons, which led to
the discovery of nuclear fission and the production of elements lying beyond, what was then, the
Periodic Table.17
Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his work on induced radioactivity and
is today regarded as one of the top scientists of the 20th century. 18 Carrying only enough luggage
with him for a short holiday abroad, he brought his wife and children with him to Sweden in
December of 1938 for the prize ceremony in Stockholm and then proceeded directly to New
York, where a job would be found for him at Columbia University. 19
Fermi was without doubt the greatest expert on neutrons, and he continued his work on this topic
on his arrival in the United States, where he was soon appointed Professor of Physics at Columbia
University, N.Y. (1939-I942).20
=================== SLIDE 21
Otto Hahn
Fritz Strassman
16
www.lucidcafe.com/library/95sep/fermi.html
Emilio Segre, “Enrico Ferme Physicist”
18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi
19 Thomas Powers, “Heisenberg’s War”
20 www.benitalrok.com/EnricoFerni.htm
17
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1879-1960
1902-1980
In 1938 German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann:
Split apart uranium atoms and discovered nuclear fission. They were the first to realize that the
Uranium atom actually split.21 They discovered that a tiny portion of the uranium atom's mass
could be converted into an estimated 200 million electron volts of potentially usable energy. This
process was to be called fission.
They published their findings in December of 1938.22
Otto Hahn23, brooded on the probable military applications of this phenomen and considered
suicide! After the war as a prisoner at Farm Hall, in England, he was shattered at hearing that the
US exploded the first A-Bomb on Hiroshima.24
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Otto Frisch
Lise Meitner
1904-1979
1878-1968
In 1939 Austrians Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch confirmed Hahn and Strassmann’s
findings.
She was the second woman to earn her doctoral in physics at the university of Vienna.
Lise Meitner, was an Austrian of Jewish descent and lost her citizenship after the Anschluss
(annexation of Austria into Germany) and emigrated to Sweden. There she and her nephew Otto
Robert Frisch published the first physical explanation of "uranium fission" in the English journal
Nature in an article titled "A new type of nuclear reaction." This article contained the first
appearance of the term nuclear fission!25
In Sweden where she fled, she and Neils Bohrs, who travelled from Copenhagen to Stockholm,
regularly collaborated.
=================== SLIDE 23
21
www.chemheritage.org/classroom/chemach/atomic/hahn-meitner.html
www.atomicheritage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=171&Itemid=115
23 www.atomicheritage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=171&Itemid=115
24 General Leslie M. Groves: “Now It Can Be Told”
25www.nature.com/physics/looking-back/meitner/index.html
22
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THE LETTER
Albert Einstein
1879-1955
Leo Szilard
Franklin D Roosevelt
1898-1964
1882-1945
In 1939 Leo Szilard warned the world:
Szilard, an Austrian Jew was dismissed from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry when the
Nazis came to power.
By the end of 1939 more than a hundred scientific articles on nuclear fission had been
published.26
Szilard worried that Germany would discover the atomic bomb. He urged other scientists to keep
fission private in order to postpone Germany from manufacturing the bomb. In a letter prepared
for Albert Einstein, Szilard, with the help of Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller, wrote to
President Roosevelt warning about the possibility of creating an atomic weapon and urged the US
government to develop this weapon before Germany. This letter was a catalyst in involving the
US government in atomic research, which led to establishing The Manhattan Project.
On December 2, 1942, Szilard and Enrico Fermi were successful in creating the first controlled
nuclear chain reaction.
Szilard and his friend Eugene Wigner were also concerned about the access to the huge deposits
of uranium that existed in the Belgium Congo that Germany was soon to have as the annexation
of Belgium was imminent! Szilard was aware that Einstein also had direct access to the King and
Queen of Belgium and wanted to enlist him to present the severity of this issue to them!
In 1944 Szilard actively opposed the use of nuclear weapons on Japan and after the war worked to
control nuclear proliferation.27 He wanted a test organized that could be witnessed by Japanese
observers who would then have the opportunity to surrender and spare lives.28
=================== SLIDE 24
26
27
28
Thomas Powers, “Heisenberg’s War”
Cynthia C. Kelly, “The Manhattan Project”
"Knowledge or Certainty". Jacob Bronowski (writer, presenter).”The Ascent of Man”.
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Otto Frisch
Rudolf Peierls
1904-1979
1907-1995
Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls in 1940 are first to calculate critical mass
The two German born scientists were the first to calculate that an atomic bomb would require
about 1 lb of 235U. Before it had been assumed that the bomb itself would require many tons of
uranium, implying that it was theoretically possible, but not a practical military device. An earlier
letter to President Roosevelt signed by Albert Einstein had suggested it may need to be delivered
by ship but could not be small enough to drop from the air.29
Frisch first worked at the universities of Berlin and Hamburg, but was dismissed under German
racial laws in 1933 and moved to the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. In the
summer of 1939, Frisch left Denmark for what he anticipated would be a short trip to
Birmingham, but the outbreak of World War II precluded his return.30
Rudolf Peierls was a German born physicist and studied nuclear physics with Werner Heisenberg
and Wolfgang Pauli but fled to England when Hitler rose to power in 1933. He joined the
Manhattan Project in 1943 as part of the British Mission.31
Interestingly, most of the experimental and theoretical scientific calculations and assessments that
formed the basis for the MAUD Report were the work of Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls.
However, since they were both Germans living in England, they were “officially classified as
“enemy aliens”, and could not, by law, be part of a wartime committee 32. The name MAUD was a
code name chosen from the first name of one of the member’s nanny. The MAUD committee
worked out the basic principles of both the fission bomb design and uranium enrichment by
gaseous diffusion. The work completed by this top-secret committee alerted the United States to
the feasibility of an atomic bomb. In July 1941, the MAUD committee issued an eye-catching
report. The report was titled “On the Use of Uranium for a Bomb,” and it reaffirmed that the
weapon suggested by Frisch and Peierls would definitely work. Since the bomb only required
approximately a ten-kilogram critical mass, and could fit on existing warplanes, the MAUD
report predicted it could be ready by 1943. This report helped crystallize the American bomb
effort because it outlined specific plans for producing a bomb, and the report was produced by a
distinguished group of well-respected scientists.
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29
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisch-Peierls_memorandum
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Robert_Frisch
31 Cynthia C. Kelly, “The Manhattan Project”
32 Society for the Historical Preservation of the Manhattan Project. www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/index.htm. April
4, 2002.
30
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Werner Heisenberg
1901-1976
In 1941 Werner Heisenberg:
During this same period, 1932 nobelist Werner Heisenberg (the Heisenberg uncertainity
principal) was working within the German regime at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics on
a nuclear weapons program. In April 1941 a German Jewish physicist, Fritz Reiche arrived in the
United States bearing a message from Heisenberg's colleague and friend Fritz Houtermans which
was relayed to American officials in the following handwritten note:
"a reliable colleague [Houtermans] who is working at a technical research laboratory asked him
[Reiche] to let us know that a large number of German physicists are working intensively on the
problem of the uranium bomb under the direction of Heisenberg, that Heisenberg himself tries to
delay the work as much as possible, fearing the catastrophic results of a success." 33
Early in World War II, the deeply patriotic Heisenberg had conducted for the Germans chain
reaction experiments with heavy water that led him to believe in the feasibility of a nuclear
weapon. Heisenberg visited his mentor and former teacher, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen in 1941,
perhaps to ask his advice on the right course of action for the development of atomic energy. It is
not certain what was said during this meeting, however Bohr came away with the impression that
the Nazis were actively developing a nuclear bomb. Within a few days before Germany's
surrender, Heisenberg was captured by Allied forces and incarcerated with other German atomic
scientist at Farm Hall, a country estate near Cambridge, England. It was later determined that the
Germans were never close to developing an atomic bomb.
Author Thomas Powers argues that the physicist heroically hid key calculations proving a bomb
was possible.34 Frayn, in his play COPENHAGEN wouldn’t go as far, simply saying “It’s a
question of what was going on in Heisenberg’s mind”.35. The historian Paul Rose has taken the
opposite view. He believes Heisenberg tried hard to build an atomic bomb, but failed because he
did not understand the physics properly. Heisenberg's own version was that he and fellow
scientists in the Uranium Club were spared the decision because they had not made enough
progress due to the circumstances of the war.36
It’s true that Heisenberg was under contradictory pressures after the war which made it
particularly difficult for him to explain what he had been trying to do. He wanted to distance
himself from the Nazis, but he didn’t want to suggest that he had been a traitor. He was reluctant
33
(Thomas Powers, Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb.)
Thomas Powers, “Heisenberg’s War”
35 Michael Frayn. “Copenhagen”, 1998
34
36www.physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/3462, “WERNER HEISENBERG: CONTROVERSIAL SCIENTIST”
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to claim to his fellow-Germans that he had deliberately lost the war, but was no less reluctant to
suggest that he had failed them simply out of incompetence!37
By this time President Franklin D. Roosevelt had given Vannevar Bush, his chief scientific
advisor, permission to form the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and
responsibility for the uranium committee. Bush immediately designated the army to be in charge
of developing an atomic bomb!
=================== SLIDE 26
Col. (later Gen.) Leslie Groves
1896-1970
In 1942 Col. Leslie Groves is appointed as the head of the Mahattan Engineering District:
Groves is immediately promoted to Brigadier General!
His success in overseeing a huge number of construction projects costing billions of dollars
during the mobilization period between 1940 and 1942 made him a natural choice to take charge
of the fledgling atomic bomb program
The Manhattan Engineering District was set up by the corps of army engineers with it’s
headquarters located in New York City and was to supervise projects assigned to it by the Chief
of Engineers!
The Manhattan Project became the code name for the research and development project that
would produce the world’s first atomic bomb and Gen. Leslie Groves was its’ director!
He was a heavy handed and forceful leader that drove the scientists crazy.
Later when Groves recruited a staff to work with the nuclear scientists he told them:
“Your job won’t be easy. At great expense we have gathered the largest collection of
crackpots ever seen”38
Toward the end of the war, Groves organized and executed the covert operations ALSOS which
was to keep the German Scientists out of the hands of the Russians and AZUSA which would,
possibly, kidnap Heisenberg.
=================== SLIDE 27
37
38
Michael Frayn, “Copenhagen”, 1998
Richard Lacayo, “The Atomic Meltdown”
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The American Prometheus
1904-1967
In 1942 J. Robert Oppenheimer is named scientific director of The Manhattan Project.
He was supported and proposed by Gen. Groves.
There was, however, much opposition to his appointment as he and his wife Jean Tatlock
associated with a number of communist front organizations. They were in no way Russian
Communists but rather believed in and supported charitable organizations that championed third
world and under-priviledged nations.
=================== SLIDE 28
Gen. Groves recognized the brilliance that was apparent in Oppenheimer and sued the Military
Policy Committee to make the appointment!
As the two (Groves and Oppenheimer) were a dichotomous union, the epitome of military
security and the opened-minded-free-thinking scientist, they respected each others value and
contributions to the project.
Groves, however, believed in strict compartmentalization stating that one should only know and
be concerned with ones own area of operation. Oppie, on the other hand, believed that everybody
at Los Alamos should know exactly what everybody else was doing. This issue caused much
tension between Groves and Oppenheimer!
Oppenheimer’s contributions to the Manhattan Project were immeasurable. He had brought
together the best minds in physics, over 3,000 people at Los Alamos, and his efforts earned him
the Presidential Medal of Merit in 1946.39
Oppenheimer wrote that “the experience of watching the first nuclear explosion called to his mind
the legend of Prometheus, punished by Zeus for giving man fire, and said also that he thought
fleetingly of Alfred Nobel's vain hope that dynamite would end wars”.40 Kai Bird and Martin J.
Sherwin dubbed Oppenheimer the “American Prometheus” in their 2006 biography of him. 41
39
40
41
www.thocp.net/biographies/oppenheimer_robert.htm
www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/trinity.htm
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, “American Prometheus, The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer”
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In 1947, Oppenheimer left his position at Berkeley, citing difficulties with the administration
during the war, and took up the directorship of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, NJ..
He later held Albert Einstein’s old position of senior professor of theoretical physics.
In the 50’s Oppie was demoralized by the wrath of Joe McCarthy’s witch hunts and the
persnickety J. Edgar Hoover! Both tried to hang the stigma of communist traitor around his neck.
The hearings devastated him and he retreated to the tiny island of St. John in the Virgin Isle.
=================== SLIDE 29
Uranium
235U 0.7%
High Fission Probability
238U
99.3%
Not suitable for Fission
Plutonium
239Pu
Glen Seaborg 1942
High Fission Probability
Not naturally occurring
1912-1999
Glen Seaborg (1942):
discovered that 238U can be transformed into fissionable 239Pu by exposing it to high radioactivity
in a nuclear reactor where, over time, the 238U picks up extra nuclear particles. The process was
piloted and proved out at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge. At Hanford, three watercooled reactors (or piles), designated by the letters B, D, and F, were built about six miles apart
on the south bank of the Columbia River. The first Hanford reactor, B Reactor, went critical42 in
September 1944
Scientists knew that the most common isotope, 238U, was not suitable for a nuclear weapon. There
is a fairly high probability that an incident neutron would be captured to form 239U instead of
causing a fission. However, 235U has a high fission probability.
Of natural uranium, only 0.7% is 235U while 99.3% is 238U. This meant that a large amount of
uranium was needed to obtain the necessary quantities of 235U. Also, 235U cannot be separated
chemically from 238U, since the isotopes are chemically similar. Alternative methods had to be
developed to separate the isotopes. This was another problem for the Manhattan Project scientists
to solve before a bomb could be built.
Research had also predicted that 239Pu would have a high fission probability. However, 239Pu is
not a naturally occurring element and would have to be made. The reactors at Hanford,
Washington were built to produce plutonium. Plutonium derived it’s name from the planet Pluto,
the planet beyond that of Uranius!43
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42
www.newnavy.us/nuclear-power/criticality.htm :Nuclear criticality: if in this process the neutron population remains
relatively constant then we state that the reactor has achieved criticality. There are many variables that can change the state of
the reactor, but a good design will try to keep the reactor inherently stable. In a nuclear reactor, the reactor operator uses
control rods to effectively or actually (depending on construction) absorb neutrons. By changing the position of these rods in
the core he can change the status of criticality
43 www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_Alloys
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Neils Bohr
1885-1962
In 1943 Danish Physicists Neils Bohr escaped from Denmark to Sweden
Bohr lived in Copenhagen, Denmark where he founded the Institute for Theoretical Physics in
1921 (now known as the Niels Bohr Institute). For many years he had been one of the most
respected physicist in the world, and he had won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922 for his work
on the structure of the atom44.
Bohr was flown from Sweden to London to assist the British in their Tube Alloys Project which
was the code name for the British Weapon Program! He almost died in this flight as he failed to
follow the pilots instruction for using an oxygen mask while flying at high altitudes. When the
pilot realized he was not responding when they spoke to him over the intercom he lowered the
plane to a lower altitude and Bohr survived the flight!
He worked at the top-secret Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico, U.S. on The Manhattan
Project here, according to Richard Feynman, he was known by the assumed name of Nicholas
Baker 45 for security reasons. His role in the project was important. He was seen as a
knowledgeable consultant or "father confessor" on the project. He was concerned about a nuclear
arms race, and is quoted as saying, "That is why I went to America. They didn't need my help in
making the atom bomb."46
Bohr believed that atomic secrets should be shared by the international scientific community.
After meeting with Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer suggested Bohr visit President Franklin D.
Roosevelt to convince him that the Mahattan Project should be shared with the Russians in the
hope of speeding up its results. Roosevelt suggested Bohr return to England to try to win British
approval. Winston Churchill disagreed with the idea of openness towards the Russians to the
point that he wrote in a letter: "It seems to me Bohr ought to be confined or at any rate made to
see that he is very near the edge of mortal crimes."
After the war Bohr returned to Copenhagen, advocating the peaceful use of nuclear energy. He
died in Copenhagen in 1962.
=================== SLIDE 31
Abraham Pais, Neils Bohr’s Times, in Physics, Philosophy, and Polity, pg. 171, 214-215
Niels Bohr: The Man, His Science, and the World They Changed, by Ruth Moore ISBN 0262631016
Richard Hewlett and Oscar Anderson, The New World: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Vol. 1:
1939-1946, pg. 310
44
45
46
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Heisenberg and Bohr
There is a very interesting play “COPENHAGEN”47 in which the author dramatizes Heisenberg’s
visit to Copenhagen to confer with Bohr!
You must understand that in the early days of the 20th century the great scientists all confided
with each other. They sent letters to their contemporaries and held seminars discussing their ideas
and theories. It was not uncommon for one of these great scientists to throw cold water on the
other’s theory causing the latter to rethink his thesis and perhaps reapproach the subject!
It was in 1941 during the heat of the war and a time in which Neils Bohr, son of a Jewish Mother,
was contemplating an escape to Sweden. Heisenberg, the nobelist and director of Hitler’s nuclear
program wanted to meet and confer with the nobelist Neils Bohr. The visit culminated in a
lengthy walk in the woods from after which they never spoke to each other again.
Bohr’s wife said, after the war and even after Heisenberg attempted to explain the visit “no matter
what anyone says, it (Heisenberg’s visit) was a hostile visit”48
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•
Conclusion:
1896 - Becquerel detects nuclear radiation
1897 - Becquerel & Curies discover radioactivity
1898 - Curies discover and isolate Radium & Polonium
1905 - Einstein relates mass to energy E=mc2
1932 - Chadwick discovers neutron
1933 - Szilard realizes possibility of chain reaction
1934 - Fermi bombards heavy elements with neutrons
1938 - Hahn & Strassman demonstrate nuclear fission
1939 - Meitner & Frisch define theory of fission
1939 - Einstein issues letter of warning to FDR
1939 - Oppenheimer realizes possibility of fission bomb
1939 - WWII begins
1940 - Peierls & Frisch conclude only1lb of 235U needed
1941 - Seaborg discovers Plutonium
1943 - Manhattan Project begins
1945 – Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima
It has been slightly more than 100 years since we’ve begun to conceive of the structure of the atom. It is
within the last 70 years that we began to understand the concept of nuclear fission or the splitting of the
atom! Science and a host of notable scientists have moved us into the modern age.
================== SLIDE 33
47
48
Michael Frayn, “Copenhagen”
Michael Frayn “Copenhagen” pg.104 ‘postscripts’
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The culmination of the Manhattan Project was the detonation of Little Boy and Fat Man, demonstrating
the reality of Einstein’s E=MC2, the combined brillance of the aforementioned scientists and the fears of
Otto Hahn.
The scientists who built the bomb were of all different nationalities and religions. They banded together
out of a sense of patriotism, not just for America, but for Western Civilization and for the ideals of
humanity that they all embraced.49
There is no question of the significance of the Manhattan Project as it profoundly influenced American
and world history and left an indelible legacy for the 21st century. With an unprecedented alliance of
industry, academia and government, the Manhattan Project brought an end to World War II, established
America as a global super power, and laid the foundation for twenty-first century science and
technology.50
After the war, J. Robert Oppenheimer laid opened his hands to Truman and said “Mr. President, I have
blood on my hands”.51,52
It is still a matter of debate whether American scientists took the right road while developing nuclear
weapons. According to Thomas Powers, Heisenberg and the leading scientists of Germany drug their feet
when it came to nuclear weapons!53 ……..…..But, of course, then there was the cold war!
What could we accomplish today if the brilliant thinkers of the world were brought together in a 29
billion dollar program to focus on some of the problems and issues that currently beset us? Could we
solve CANCER…AIDS … ALZHEIMER’S……GLOBAL WARMING ….. PEACE IN OUR TIME?
=================== SLIDE 34
Jennet Conant, “109 East Palace, Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos”
50 Testimony for the Subcommittee on National Parks on The Manhattan Project National Historical Park Study Act of 2003
March 9, 2004 by Cynthia Kelly, President , Atomic Heritage Foundation
51 Jennet Conant, “109 East Palace, Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos”
49
52
After the scientist left, Truman turned to Dean Acheson and said, "Blood on his hands! Dammit, he hasn't half as much blood
on his hands as I have! You just don't go around bellyaching about it.
53 Thomas Powers: “Heisenberg’s War”
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Formatted: Centered, Right: -0.1"
TThe Manhattan
Project
A Torch Club
Presentation
By:
Tom
Bitner
April 16, 2009
FINIS
!!!
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