In August 1939- a month before the outbreak of WWII, Einstein signed a letter authored by Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard addressed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, advising him to fund research into the possibility of using nuclear fission as a weapon in the event that Nazi Germany may also be conducting such research.
"This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable – though much less certain – that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory."
The letter speaks of two rising worlds- the new field of subatomic physics that had been revealed in the last 40 years and a new enemy in Nazi Germany who had already seized power in Austria and part of the Czech Republic. The two worlds would be inseparably flung together, in a reaction that would change the world.
It is hard to fathom how much physics progressed in only 40 years. At the turn of the 20th century much of the physics establishment still rejected the reality of atoms and molecules- so much so that eminent physics journal editor and Nobel laureate Wilhelm Ostwald refused to let atoms and molecules be described as anything other than convenient theoretical constructs.
It took Albert Einstein's theoretical explanation of Brownian motion (random movement of particles suspended in fluid) in terms of movements of atoms (1905) and Jean Perrin's experimental work supporting Einstein's predictions (1911), to finally prove the reality of atoms.
It took Albert Einstein's theoretical explanation of Brownian motion (random movement of particles suspended in fluid) in terms of movements of atoms (1905) and Jean Perrin's experimental work supporting Einstein's predictions (1911), to finally prove the reality of atoms.
Photomicrograph of atoms in a tungsten crystal, magnified 2,700,000 times
From such humble beginnings things progressed rapidly, two years later Rutherford showed that an atom had a heavy nucleus at the centre of the atom (1913), with the electrons orbiting it like planets around a sun. The space around this nucleus and the movements of the particles that occupy was described over the next fourteen years as Heisenberg, Born, Jordan and Schrödinger created Quantum mechanics (1925) and the famed Quantum Uncertainty principle- not to mention the small matter of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity that he published during this time- both true revolutions in understanding physical reality- time, space, matter and the universal forces.
Our eventual author of Einstein's letter to FDR- Leo Szilárd - fled to London to escape Nazi persecution (1933), where he read an article written in The Times which rejected the possibility of using atomic energy for practical purposes. Although nuclear fission had not yet been discovered, Szilárd was so annoyed at this dismissal that he conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while waiting for traffic lights to change. Five years (1938) later Hahn and Strassmann conduct the first experiments with nuclear fission.
The US administration were skeptical about Einstein's claim, and it was not until August 1942 that the Manhattan Project was founded- headed scientifically by J.R.Oppenheimer and militarily by Gen Groves. The project brought together almost all of the physicists mentioned above- and many more- in the greatest collaboration of scientific genius in a project that would eventually employ more than 130,000 people and cost a total of nearly $2 billion USD ($20 billion in 2004 dollars).
Our eventual author of Einstein's letter to FDR- Leo Szilárd - fled to London to escape Nazi persecution (1933), where he read an article written in The Times which rejected the possibility of using atomic energy for practical purposes. Although nuclear fission had not yet been discovered, Szilárd was so annoyed at this dismissal that he conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while waiting for traffic lights to change. Five years (1938) later Hahn and Strassmann conduct the first experiments with nuclear fission.
The US administration were skeptical about Einstein's claim, and it was not until August 1942 that the Manhattan Project was founded- headed scientifically by J.R.Oppenheimer and militarily by Gen Groves. The project brought together almost all of the physicists mentioned above- and many more- in the greatest collaboration of scientific genius in a project that would eventually employ more than 130,000 people and cost a total of nearly $2 billion USD ($20 billion in 2004 dollars).
(Documentary on the Manhattan Project, Google Video)
December 2, 1942 Italian physicist Enrico Fermi makes the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.
December 2, 1942 Italian physicist Enrico Fermi makes the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.
"When man first achieved the first self sustained nuclear chain reaction, a coded phone call was made to one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, James Conant: 'The Italian navigator has landed in the new world... The natives were very friendly"."
Less than three years later on July 16 1945 — human civilisation created it's first nuclear explosion, testing an plutonium-based nuclear weapon, known as "the gadget", during the "Trinity" test near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
However, Nazi Germany had already surrendered to Allied powers several months earlier, marking the end of the war in Europe. To the protest of many of the physicists involved President Truman ordered the use of the new weapon on the sole remaining axis power- Hirohito's Japan. In the early hours of August 6th 1945 three American B-29's, Enola Gay, The Great Artiste and Necessary Evil, took off bound for Hiroshima and an event that would echo across time and space to change the very course of human history.