Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was an underground project formed by the U.S. government to develop a nuclear fission device called the atomic bomb. An atomic bomb is a weapon that uses the energy from a nuclear reaction called Fission for its destruction. The Manhattan Project was the code name of United States attempt to construct an atomic bomb during World War II. The purpose of the Manhattan Project was simple: to build; test; and use its power if necessary. The Manhattan Project was carried out in extreme secrecy. By 1945, the project had nearly 40 laboratories and factories which employed approximately 200,000 people. In 1939, Just before the beginning of World War II, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the President of United States Franklin D. Roosevelt in which Einstein told Roosevelt about Nazi German efforts to purify Uranium-235 which might be used to build an atomic bomb. Alarmed about Hitler’s purpose, the president Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered an effort to obtain an atomic weapon before Germany. For this mission were contracted some of the greatest scientists that have ever lived. The Scientists recruited to produce an atom bomb were Robert Oppenheimer (USA), David Bohm (USA), Leo Szilard (Hungary), Eugene Wigner (Hungary), Rudolf Peierls (Germany), Otto Frisch (Germany), Niels Bohr (Denmark), Felix Bloch (Switzerland), James Franck (Germany), James Chadwick (Britain), Emilio Segre (Italy), Enrico Fermi (Italy), Klaus Fuchs (Germany) and Edward Teller (Hungary).

The most complicated issue to be addressed in the making of an atomic bomb was the production of ample amounts of "enriched" uranium to sustain a chain reaction. Over the course of six years, from 1939 to 1945, more than $2 billion were spend during the history of the Manhattan Project. The formulas for refining uranium and putting together a working atomic bomb were created and seen to their logical ends by some of the greatest minds of our time. Robert Oppenheimer,...