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Who invented the atomic bomb?
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American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team at Manhattan Project invented the atomic bomb.
30 Answers
Well the entire Manhattan Project was responsible for the creation of the first functioning atomic bomb. It required 130,000 people. J. Robert Oppenheimer was at the helm of the Manhattan Project when it succeeded.
From my reading of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes and my knowledge of physics and the history of physics, if you were going to look for one person whose contribution sped up the project by an indeterminate amount of time, it was the work of Leo Szilard (I believe he was only an advisor to the Manhattan Project and not directly contributing to it when the project completed). Many people contributed substantially and have a more distinguished scientific legacy; however, Leo Szilard had a belief that there had to be an element that could undergo a runaway nuclear fission reaction -- he took his belief from H. G. Wells' science-fiction novel "The World Set Free" (1914). He really had no real reason to believe this, but he set about finding such a reaction. As Savas Dimopoulos says, "the origin of a great discovery is knowing one thing that no one else does." In 1939 when Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered neutrons were released in fission, Szilard knew immediately what this meant and immediately set off to build an energy source. Enrico Fermi dismissed the idea as extremely unlikely calling Szilard "Nuts!".
Szilard pushed hard, partnering with Albert Einstein and Edward Teller to get the US government to fund this research which ultimately led to the creation of the Manhattan Project. Fermi was cautious and didn't want to over-promise and under-deliver. This would have put the atomic bomb on a much slower trajectory and it might not have commenced until after WWII, thereby delaying the atomic bomb potentially by decades (it cost $2B, equivalent to $24B today over 4 years during the largest war in World history). The USSR wouldn't have put in the same efforts into nuclear weapons research without the demonstration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US wouldn't have put the enormous efforts into the hydrogen bomb either.
I should say, that this this is probably not a good thing, though who knows, we might have had very bloody wars rather than the Cold War. But without Szilard beliefs and going for the jugular, the atomic bomb and all nuclear physics funding would have been much lower and the development would have been delayed by an indeterminate period of time.
From my reading of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes and my knowledge of physics and the history of physics, if you were going to look for one person whose contribution sped up the project by an indeterminate amount of time, it was the work of Leo Szilard (I believe he was only an advisor to the Manhattan Project and not directly contributing to it when the project completed). Many people contributed substantially and have a more distinguished scientific legacy; however, Leo Szilard had a belief that there had to be an element that could undergo a runaway nuclear fission reaction -- he took his belief from H. G. Wells' science-fiction novel "The World Set Free" (1914). He really had no real reason to believe this, but he set about finding such a reaction. As Savas Dimopoulos says, "the origin of a great discovery is knowing one thing that no one else does." In 1939 when Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered neutrons were released in fission, Szilard knew immediately what this meant and immediately set off to build an energy source. Enrico Fermi dismissed the idea as extremely unlikely calling Szilard "Nuts!".
Szilard pushed hard, partnering with Albert Einstein and Edward Teller to get the US government to fund this research which ultimately led to the creation of the Manhattan Project. Fermi was cautious and didn't want to over-promise and under-deliver. This would have put the atomic bomb on a much slower trajectory and it might not have commenced until after WWII, thereby delaying the atomic bomb potentially by decades (it cost $2B, equivalent to $24B today over 4 years during the largest war in World history). The USSR wouldn't have put in the same efforts into nuclear weapons research without the demonstration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US wouldn't have put the enormous efforts into the hydrogen bomb either.
I should say, that this this is probably not a good thing, though who knows, we might have had very bloody wars rather than the Cold War. But without Szilard beliefs and going for the jugular, the atomic bomb and all nuclear physics funding would have been much lower and the development would have been delayed by an indeterminate period of time.
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Originally Answered: Who had the original idea for the atomic bomb?
The idea is codified in the idea of a ‘nuclear chain reaction’. We understood that fission existed (various people claim credit… Fermi did it first but didn’t fully understand the results, so most credit goes to Otto Hahn), that we could fire beams of atoms or particles at another atom and break them apart. What really was key was the idea that neutrons from one fission could then cause MORE fission reactions, and that the process could begin and uncontrolled process of great energy.
Hungarian physicist t Leó Szilárd first postulated the theory, but had no idea what materials could actually accomplish a chain reaction, or that if it was even physically possible (vs. theoretical). He did realize that neutrons (vs. other fission byproducts) would be the key, as they had no electrical charge to be repelled from other nuclei. He joined minds with Enrico Fermi, and together they realized that uranium would be the best material to be used in an chain reaction.
They, along with Einstein and some other physicist (including fellow Hungarian Edward Teller, who went on to postulate the H-bomb) wrote the letter to FDR in 1939 proposing a uranium-fueled bomb as a weapon.
The role of the Einstein-Szillard letter in precipitating the Manhattan Project is greatly exaggerated. The Einstein-Szillard memo was written in 1939, the Manhattan project did not start until 1941.
The letter resulted in the S-1 Uranium Committee, which did very little and had a tiny budget. This was partly due to the fact that their understanding was that tons of Uranium 235 would be required, and hence the project was not very practical.
In 1940, the British (in fact Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls working for the British) correctly appreciated that the amount of Uranium 235 required was far less than previously thought (pounds rather than tons).
In late 1940, the British MAUD committee produced a report outlining the feasibility of the bomb, which was sent to the Americans but ignored. The British started their "Tube Alloys" project but couldn't afford to prioritize it as they were fighting for their lives.
The key event was the visit of Mark Oliphant of the MAUD committee to the USA in 1941, where he impressed on the US scientists the feasibility and urgency of manufacturing the bomb. After these meetings, in December 1941 Vannevar Bush created the Office of Scientific Research and Development, after that the Manhattan Project took off and quickly eclipsed the British project, which was eventually (1943) folded into it.
Some Wikipedia References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-1...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fri...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAU...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tub...
Richard Rhodes The Making of The Atomic Bomb covers this, along with the history of the production of the Atomic Bomb, in great detail.
The letter resulted in the S-1 Uranium Committee, which did very little and had a tiny budget. This was partly due to the fact that their understanding was that tons of Uranium 235 would be required, and hence the project was not very practical.
In 1940, the British (in fact Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls working for the British) correctly appreciated that the amount of Uranium 235 required was far less than previously thought (pounds rather than tons).
In late 1940, the British MAUD committee produced a report outlining the feasibility of the bomb, which was sent to the Americans but ignored. The British started their "Tube Alloys" project but couldn't afford to prioritize it as they were fighting for their lives.
The key event was the visit of Mark Oliphant of the MAUD committee to the USA in 1941, where he impressed on the US scientists the feasibility and urgency of manufacturing the bomb. After these meetings, in December 1941 Vannevar Bush created the Office of Scientific Research and Development, after that the Manhattan Project took off and quickly eclipsed the British project, which was eventually (1943) folded into it.
Some Wikipedia References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-1...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fri...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAU...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tub...
Richard Rhodes The Making of The Atomic Bomb covers this, along with the history of the production of the Atomic Bomb, in great detail.
The scientific developments that directly led to the first atomic bomb (fission bomb) was the discovery that you could split an atom in a process called nuclear fission and harness the energy. The main developments that led to fission and the atomic bomb are as follows:
1. Albert Einstein, in the year 1905, proposed the equivalence of mass and energy with the now famous expression [math]E = mc^2[/math].
2. Ernest Rutherford proposed in 1911 the atom as consisting of a core called nucleus, consisting of heavy protons surrounded by electrons. For the atomic bomb, it is only necessary to consider the nucleus. Around the same time, Neils Bohr and others developed quantum mechanics that deepened our understanding of the atom.
3. Henri Becquerel discovered spontaneous radioactivity in Uranium, and Pierre and Marie Curie explained and worked extensively on the concept. This was in the early 1900s.
4. James Chadwick in 1932 discovered that the nucleus also consisted of neutrons and soon, it was discovered that neutrons and protons are held together by a hitherto unknown kind of force called the 'strong nuclear force'.
5. Enrico Fermi discovered in 1934 that you can bombard Uranium with neutrons and generate new elements and energy, in experiments that demonstrate Einstein's mass-energy equivalence. This phenomenon is called 'induced radioactivity' as opposed to the spontaneous natural radioactivity discovered and studied by Becquerel and the Curies.
6. Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, and Fritz Strassman in 1938 discovered the process of nuclear fission in Germany. This was the experiment that perhaps most directly led to the physics behind the atomic bomb. Soon after, this experiment was repeated with success in the US.
7. Leo Szilard, a US based Hungarian émigré, discovered in the 1930s that this 'nuclear fission reaction' can be cascaded into a self-sustaining chain reaction. This made atomic bombs theoretically possible. Around the same time, Frederic Joliot-Curie and Enrico Fermi also proposed designs for 'nuclear reactors'- setups to implement nuclear chain reactions. Enrico Fermi later led the effort to build the first chain reactor on a modified squash court in Chicago in 1942.
At the policy level, around 1939, following the culmination of the above developments, physicists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner urged Einstein to write to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the then president of the US about the possibility that the Germans, then in conflict with the US, would be attempting to build an atomic bomb- a bomb based on the nuclear chain reaction and having enormous destructive capabilities. The letter delivered to FDR on October 11, 1939 asked FDR to take all steps to secure Uranium supplies from Belgian controlled Congo, and start a serious government effort to get the scientists together and provide logistical support to hasten the development of the physics, mathematics, and engineering leading to the atomic bomb. The letter can be seen at this link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki...
This led to the Manhattan Project, a nationwide effort led by the facility at Los Alamos in New Mexico, which culminated in the development of the atomic bomb. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project. The work that went on as part of the Manhattan Project was classified for several years, but with the developments and discoveries 1 through 7 above being in the public domain, it essentially meant that any country with sufficient money and expertise could eventually make an atomic bomb. The amazing thing about the Manhattan Project was that they were the pioneers, and made the bomb in just 5 years- an enormously significant achievement for someone doing it for the first time in the world. :)
1. Albert Einstein, in the year 1905, proposed the equivalence of mass and energy with the now famous expression [math]E = mc^2[/math].
2. Ernest Rutherford proposed in 1911 the atom as consisting of a core called nucleus, consisting of heavy protons surrounded by electrons. For the atomic bomb, it is only necessary to consider the nucleus. Around the same time, Neils Bohr and others developed quantum mechanics that deepened our understanding of the atom.
3. Henri Becquerel discovered spontaneous radioactivity in Uranium, and Pierre and Marie Curie explained and worked extensively on the concept. This was in the early 1900s.
4. James Chadwick in 1932 discovered that the nucleus also consisted of neutrons and soon, it was discovered that neutrons and protons are held together by a hitherto unknown kind of force called the 'strong nuclear force'.
5. Enrico Fermi discovered in 1934 that you can bombard Uranium with neutrons and generate new elements and energy, in experiments that demonstrate Einstein's mass-energy equivalence. This phenomenon is called 'induced radioactivity' as opposed to the spontaneous natural radioactivity discovered and studied by Becquerel and the Curies.
6. Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, and Fritz Strassman in 1938 discovered the process of nuclear fission in Germany. This was the experiment that perhaps most directly led to the physics behind the atomic bomb. Soon after, this experiment was repeated with success in the US.
7. Leo Szilard, a US based Hungarian émigré, discovered in the 1930s that this 'nuclear fission reaction' can be cascaded into a self-sustaining chain reaction. This made atomic bombs theoretically possible. Around the same time, Frederic Joliot-Curie and Enrico Fermi also proposed designs for 'nuclear reactors'- setups to implement nuclear chain reactions. Enrico Fermi later led the effort to build the first chain reactor on a modified squash court in Chicago in 1942.
At the policy level, around 1939, following the culmination of the above developments, physicists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner urged Einstein to write to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the then president of the US about the possibility that the Germans, then in conflict with the US, would be attempting to build an atomic bomb- a bomb based on the nuclear chain reaction and having enormous destructive capabilities. The letter delivered to FDR on October 11, 1939 asked FDR to take all steps to secure Uranium supplies from Belgian controlled Congo, and start a serious government effort to get the scientists together and provide logistical support to hasten the development of the physics, mathematics, and engineering leading to the atomic bomb. The letter can be seen at this link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki...
This led to the Manhattan Project, a nationwide effort led by the facility at Los Alamos in New Mexico, which culminated in the development of the atomic bomb. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project. The work that went on as part of the Manhattan Project was classified for several years, but with the developments and discoveries 1 through 7 above being in the public domain, it essentially meant that any country with sufficient money and expertise could eventually make an atomic bomb. The amazing thing about the Manhattan Project was that they were the pioneers, and made the bomb in just 5 years- an enormously significant achievement for someone doing it for the first time in the world. :)
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