Manhattan Project - Atomic Heritage Foundation

The Manhattan Project - Nuclear Museum 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 
 
 The Manhattan Project


 
 
 History Page Type: 
 
 
 Manhattan Project History 

 
 


 

 
 Date: 
 Friday, May 12, 2017 

 


 

 
 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 discovered nuclear fission . A few months later, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard sent a letter to President Roosevelt warning him that Germany might try to build an atomic bomb. In response, FDR formed the Uranium Committee, a group of top military and scientific experts to determine the feasibility of a nuclear chain reaction.

 Nevertheless, initial research moved slowly until the spring of 1941, when the MAUD Committee (essentially the British equivalent to the Uranium Committee) issued a report affirming that an atomic bomb was possible and urging cooperation with the United States. The U.S. government responded by reorganizing its atomic research under the S-1 Committee , which was in turn under the jurisdiction of the newly created Office of Scientific Research and Development, led by Vannevar Bush . As the project progressed from research to development, however, Bush realized that the S-1 Committee did not have the resources for full-scale construction, eventually opting to turn to the Army for support.

 

 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 the University of California at Berkeley , research was underway under the direction of Ernest Lawrence . Lawrence’s most significant discovery came with his invention of the cyclotron, known as an “atom smasher,” which could accelerate atoms through a vacuum and use electromagnets to induce collisions at speeds up to 25,000 miles per second. Lawrence believed his machine could separate Uranium-235 by electromagnetic separation, one of the four possible uranium isotope separation methods that would ultimately be considered during the Manhattan Project. Also during this time, Berkeley professors Emilio Segrè and Glenn Seaborg proved that the element 94, which they named plutonium, could also be used in nuclear reactions , offering another possible path to the bomb.

 Meanwhile, at Columbia University, a team of scientists, including Enrico Fermi , Leo Szilard , Walter Zinn , and Herbert Anderson , conducted experiments using chain-reacting nuclear “piles” to measure the neutron emission from fission. Production was moved to the M

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