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Creation of the Atomic Bomb:  Who is responsible?

Matthew S. Stamper

Dr. Dan Morrill

July 2, 2008

HIST 4000

This writer contends that, contrary to popular belief, the United States did not make the greatest intellectual contribution to the development of atomic energy, when compared to other countries.  The foundations that led to the creation of the atomic bomb were laid primarily in Europe, in the mid to late Nineteenth and the mid-Twentieth centuries with a high concentration of influence from Great Britain.  The academic influence came in three forms of knowledge that were needed in order to advance from atomic theory to atomic energy and ultimately to atomic weapons: the structure of the atom, the nature of radioactive energy, and the ability to harness radioactive energy.

Historiography

            Discussion of the intellectual contributions to the development of atomic bombs cannot be separated from the United States’s use of these weapons against the Japanese in August of 1945.  Historians have long argued the motives behind using such a dreadfully destructive weapon. 

            The discussion of the decision to use the atomic bombs can be divided into two camps: the revisionists and the traditionalists.  The revisionist historians argue that the reasons behind using the atomic bomb were diplomatic and not military.   The argue that the war could have been ended with out the use of nuclear weapons, however, President Harry Truman wanted an upper hand in the looming Cold War with the Soviet Union. Gar Alperovitz is one such historian.  In his book, Atomic Diplomacy, Alperovitz argues that the bombs were used primarily to astonish and frighten the Soviet Union.  Ronald Takaki takes a different approach to the situation.  In his book, Hiroshima:  Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb, he emphasizes the American attitude of racism toward the Japanese.  He also asserts the personal life of President Truman in to the reasoning behind dropping the bombs.  He says that the lack of masculinity on behalf of Truman was a reason that the bombs were dropped.  Dropping the bombs was a way to prove his masculinity.  Takaki has not been the only historian to argue that Truman’s personal life played a major role in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Robert Lifton and Greg Mitchell included Truman’s personal doubts concerning his “own strength, courage, and decisiveness as President and Commander-in-Chief.”[i]  Alperovitz is not alone when arguing the anti-Soviet position.  Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz supported Alperovitz, by stressing the anti-Soviet objectives as the most important reason behind using the bombs. 

            They also believe that if the United States had strived to find alternative exits from the war, the Japanese would have surrendered, an invasion would have been avoided, and the use of the atomic bomb would have not been needed.  However, they do not take into account the idea of unconditional surrender and the Japanese ideology of Katsugo, like the traditionalists.  Revisionists point out that Soviet entry into the war would have caused the Japanese to realize that they were fighting a losing battle and this would eventually lead them to surrender.  They argue that Truman knew the entry of the Soviet Union would mean the end of the war.  They use a quote from his diary, “Fini Japs,” to back this claim.   Traditionalists argue that the quote was in response to the news that the first testing of the atomic bomb was successful.   Another issue that revisionists criticize is the policy of unconditional surrender.  They argue that if President Truman and his advisors would have eased up on the policy, the end of the war would have come much faster.  However, traditionalists argue that the easing up of unconditional surrender would have undermined public support for the war.

            Revisionists also find major fault with the Japan invasion estimated loss of American lives.  Truman had said that the use of the atomic bomb would save hundreds of thousands of American lives, in actuality, the estimate fell short of the number Truman projected.  Estimates of the top military planners were only 46,000 and would probably fall short of that. 

The Structure of the Atom

Atomic energy requires an atom.  Democritus, a fifth century B.C. Greek philosopher, proposed that all matter was composed of indivisible particles called atoms, which is Greek for inseparable.  From the Seventeenth century onward, atomic models of the world were used when they were needed, but whether or not the atom really existed was truly questionable.[ii] 

In the early 1800s John Dalton, of England, revived the atomic theory. Dalton was born into poverty on September 5, 1766.  He attended Pardshaw Hall School until he became schoolmaster after the retirement of Mr. John Fletcher.   Following his tenure at Pardshaw Hall School, Dalton traveled to Kendal to join his brother and cousin.  He published his first book, “Meteorological Observations and Essays.”  Dalton was researching the idea of “loose” chemical bonds when looking at oxygen and nitrogen in the air and how they remained thoroughly mixed, not separating into separate strata.   He advanced a physical theory of diffusion.[iii] 

Dalton hypothesized that each of the elements were made up of indistinguishable atoms and that all elements are diverse because they are each made of different atoms. He thought that each element had a different weight, because it was made of different atoms. Starting in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, the views of the atom began to change and the question to be answered became what kind of atom was necessary and feasible.  Prior to the twentieth century some scientists, like Englishman Sir Isaac Newton had described the atom as a “miniature billiard ball”[iv]  Newton argued in 1704, “[I]t seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end to which he formed them.”[v]   ,

Joseph John Thomson was born in a suburb of Manchester in December 1856.  As a young boy he was educated at a small private institution; his father never intended for him to have university training.  His father planned on J.J. to be an apprentice with a locomotive builder, wanting him to become a mechanical engineer.  When the time came for Thomson to begin his apprenticeship, the building firm had a long waiting list.  It was decided that Thomson would not waste time and would profit from attending a local college.  Thomson enrolled at Owens College of England.  During his time at Owens College he was primarily focused on math and physics. With the sudden death of his father, it was decided that the family could not afford to allow Thomson to begin his apprenticeship, however, he would be allowed to complete his third year at Owens to gain his certificate in Engineering.  It was after he had obtained his certification that Professor Barker, of Owens College, persuaded him to continue with mathematics and physics by applying for an entrance scholarship at Trinity College in Cambridge.[vi]  In 1876, J.J. Thomson was admitted into Trinity College. During his time as an undergraduate at Trinity, Thomson took the fellowship examinations and passed with his first try.  This accomplishment was unexpected and very unusual.  He also began work with the Cavendish Laboratory, embarking on mathematical researches on the passage of electricity through gasses and on electric charges in motion.  Thomson was elected to university lecturer in 1883.  In 1884, Thompson became the Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, which he helped shape into the primary center for the study of nuclear physics. 

Thompson’s model of the atom was the plum-pudding model.  He theorized that there were equal parts of positive and negative charges mixed together in the atom.  Through his use of the cathode he came to three conclusions.  Thompson later recollected that there was:

With this conclusion, Thompson, a British physicist, had discovered sub-atomic particles.  With this discovery, the view of the atom required a “complete revision of the physical view of matter—the nature of the positive charge, the constancy or the range of variation of atomic charges, and the disposition of positive and negative charges in the atom.”[vii] 

Thomson and his students set out to answer the broad questions that were raised with the discovery of the electron.  It was later shown by Charles Barkla that the number of electrons in the light elements was about half of the atomic number.  It was after this that Thomson developed a model of the atom that is known by his name.  Thomson’s model included the electrons embedded at equilibrium positions in a sphere of uniformly distributed positive charge.  This kept Thomson active until 1906, when he won the Nobel Prize.[viii] 

J.J. Thomson’s student, Ernest Rutherford, conducted studies to test alternate theories of the atom.  His most important discovery was in 1909.  He and an undergraduate student were bombarding a piece of gold foil with Alpha particles using a tiny lump of radium inside a box to emit the alpha particles.  For the most part, the particles went through the foil with no problem; however, a small amount was bounced back.   Rutherford concluded that the positive charge of the alpha particles were meeting the negatively charged electrons of the gold foil and bouncing back.   Rutherford concluded that the mass of the atom was in a positively charged nucleus and that the electrons occupied the outer reaches of the atom.  This discovery led him to the planetary model of the atom.  In this model, “the electrons circle the nucleus like the planets round the sun, but there is a difference:  the electrons, unlike the planets, carry electric charges.”[ix]

 The “Great Dane” of physics, Neils Bohr was born into a middle class family on October 7, 1885 to a physiology professor at the University of Copenhagen.  Bohr made an incredible contribution to the structure of the atom in 1913.  In compliance with the standard electromagnetic theory, the electrons would emit electromagnetic energy and would by this means lose speed, would eventually spiral down into the nucleus of the atom, and the atom would implode.  Apparently this did not happen.  Bohr hypothesized that electrons are present inside shells of energy or separate orbits and consequently remain stable.  The only time they move, from a higher to a lower shell of energy or the reverse, is when the atom receives or emits radiation.  If it emits radiation, the electrons move to a lower shell.  If it receives radiation, the electrons move to a higher shell.   Bohr also made it known that the nuclei of the atoms are shaped like a tear drop -- an important concept in eventually explaining the process of nuclear fission.[x]  Bohr introduced the first quantum model of the atom and the idea that the electron was stabilized by shells of energy and would not move unless the atom emitted or gains energy. 

Bohr “pointed out that the nucleus is a cluster of small spheres—the protons and neutrons—which tend to stick together, though no so firmly as to stop them moving around.  But that is just what a drop of liquid is like—a lot of slightly sticky little objects continually on the move.” [xi]  This model would eventually provide a ready-made picture of the process of nuclear fission.[xii]

Throughout the first and second decades of the Twentieth century scientists were primarily focused on the outer parts of the atom, however, in the third decade the focus shifted to the nucleus itself.  In 1932, English physicist James Chadwick, a student of Ernest Rutherford, discovered the neutrally charged particle of the atom, the neutron.[xiii]  Chadwick was born in the village of Bollington, south of Manchester in Cheshire, in 1891.  Chadwick was raised by his grandmother and when he was sixteen he applied for two scholarships for the University of Manchester.  He was granted both, accepted one and went off to college.  He had planned on studying mathematics, but he mistakenly stood in the wrong line for the entrance interviews.  Chadwick, by accident, went into the field of physics.[xiv]  During his third year he was given a research project by Ernest Rutherford.  He graduated the University of Manchester, in 1911, with honors.  He was arrested during World War One for making subversive remarks. 

When he was released after four years he returned to Manchester and was taken in by Ernest Rutherford.  Chadwick had been pushed forward by Rutherford to answer an important question that had been raised by Frederic and Irene Joliot’s experiment with beryllium.  The Joliots mixed polonium with beryllium to produce a strong source of “beryllium radiation” and in turn would use it to test the effect of the radiation on atoms of the element hydrogen, chemically bound to paraffin wax.  During their experiment they found that the radiation had the ability to knock individual hydrogen nuclei (protons) out of the paraffin wax with great force.[xv]  Chadwick compared the Juliots’s phenomenon to one billiard ball colliding with one that is standing still.  He concluded that there had to be a particle that had to charge in order to complete the collision.  He called this new particle, the neutron.   With this important discovery Chadwick was preparing the way towards the fission of uranium 235. [xvi]

Nature of Radio Active Energy

            The nature of atomic energy had to be explored before there could ever be an atomic weapon.  The process of learning more about radioactive was, again, primarily centered in countries outside of the United States.  Germany, London, New Zealand and other European countries played the major role in explaining the nature of radioactive energy. 

            Antoine Henri Becquerel was born December 15, 1852, in Paris.  During his early years he was educated at Lycée Louis le Grand.  When he turned nineteen, in 1872, he entered the École Polytechnique.  He became a pupil at the École des Ponts et Chaussées in 1874.  In 1877 he was made engineer and was chief engineer for ten years.  He later filled the position of professor at Musée d’Histoire Naturelle in 1892, which had been held by his father and grandfather.  He was also promoted to professor at the École Polytechnique in 1895. 

Following the discovery of the X-Ray, by Wilhelm Roentgen, Becquerel began to explore with fervor the research that his father had made on phosphorescence with the use of radium salts.  “Becquerel began his work sharing the popular hunch that the penetrating X-rays were associated with phosphorescence.  Using the double sulfate of uranium and potassium he exposed this salt to the sun for several hours.  When the photographic plate on which it was placed was developed, the plate showed the outline of the salt, indicating the presence of a penetrating radiation.”[xvii]  In 1896, Becquerel, a Frenchman, had discovered radioactivity. 

            Becquerel’s discovery would not have been possible if it had not been for the discovery of the X-ray by, German physicist, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1895.  Roentgen was born in Lennep, near Düsseldorf in the Rhineland on March 27, 1845.  He was the only child of a German father and Dutch mother.  Much of his childhood was spent in Holland.  His early education was from the gymnasium at Utrecht until he was expelled due to a prank that he was involved in and would not implicate others.  Later in his life he entered the Polytechnic at Zürich, Switzerland as a student in machine construction.  In 1866 he obtained a diploma of mechanical engineer, however, his interests were in physics.  He stayed at Zürich and studied physics under Kundt, receiving his doctorate 1869.  Roentgen followed Kundt from Zürich to Würzburg, Bavaria and then to Strasbourg.  In 1874, Roentgen was made a privatdozent and all the obstacles to his career were removed.  His career allowed him to have many positions and he returned to Würzburg in 1888 as the chair of physics.

 Roentgen was studying the characteristics of electrons using a cathode ray tube.  During his experiments he became aware that a fluorescent screen, that was close by, was glowing.  He inferred that it was caused by light rays or energy emitted from the cathode tube.  After he wrapped the tube in black paper he discovered that the screen still glowed.  Roentgen used his wife in one experiment that he conducted with X-rays.  He had his wife put her hand on a photographic plate and then developed the picture and found that the ray had gone through his wife’s hand but not through her bone.  Not knowing the nature of the rays he called them, X-rays.  Roentgen was aware of the practical value of his discovery, but he held himself remote from the fast developing technology of X-rays.[xviii] 

Pierre and Marie Sklodovska Curie were also key players in the research in the nature of radioactive energy.  Pierre Curie was born on May 15, 1859 in Paris.  His father was a physician.  His early education was received at home and later at the Sorbonne.  Between the ages of nineteen and twenty three, Pierre was an assistant in the laboratory of the Faculté des Sciences.  Later he was appointed to chief of the laboratory at the School of Physics and Chemistry of the city of Paris.  He remained undecorated during his career and even wrote to the director of the School of Physics that if he was given any decoration that he would have to refuse. 

Marie, the daughter of Polish teachers, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867.  She showed outstanding intellectual ability at an early age.  Due to family financial problems, she had to find a position upon completion of her secondary school training.   She served as a governess for six years to save money for a university education; however, at that time it was illegal for a Polish woman to seek higher education.  Marie made arrangements to live with her sister in Paris to continue studying physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne. 

The arrangements made with her sister did not work out due to interruptions to her study and the distance she was required to travel to the Sorbonne.  She moved from her sister’s home to the cheapest quarter near the university on a budget of 100 francs per month.  Her small budget had to cover everything from food to tuition.  To help with her financial problems she would often spend the least on food and her coal stove, even during the bitterest months.  Her dedication paid off in July 1893 when she placed first in the master’s examination in physics.  The following fall she returned to the Sorbonne with a scholarship to complete a Master’s degree in mathematics.  It was during this time she met Pierre Curie.  After only a year, they were married and this meant that they had the opportunity to work together in Pierre’s laboratory at the School of Physics and Chemistry.[xix] 

Becquerel’s discovery intrigued Marie and in 1898 she started investigating the invisible radiation from uranium.  She methodically searched the elements to see if any other element behaved in the same manner as uranium.[xx]  The Curies found that thorium and its compound behaved like uranium.  She then turned the study toward the ores of uranium and thorium, she found that “two uranium ores, pitchblende and chalcolite, showed an activity great than that attributed to the uranium that each contained.  She concluded that there had to be an unidentified element in the ore.  Pierre and Marie joined forces to identify the source of the activity.[xxi]  During their experiments to find this unknown substance, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered two new elements, polonium, named after Marie’s native country, and radium. 

In order to confirm their finding, the Curies needed to separate each of the elements and verify their atomic weight.  To do this they needed tons of pitchblende, which was very costly.  This problem was overcome when the Joachimsthal Mine in Bohemia contributed one ton of pitchblende remains after the uranium had been removed.  The Curies spent forty five months in an old shed, through freezing winter months and sweltering summer months, conducting their experiments to obtain a pure sample of radium chloride and to determine its atomic weight.  In 1902, a Frenchman and a Polish woman, had fully discovered and documented the radioactive elements, polonium and radium. Their most important input was to reveal that the quality of radioactivity resulted from the internal composition of the atom itself.

Not only did Ernest Rutherford play a key role in the study of the atomic model, he also had a large influence on the question of the nature of radioactive energy.  While Rutherford was working with J.J. Thomson on the atomic model, he heard of the discoveries of Becquerel and the Curies.  This led him to embark on a lifelong study of radioactivity.  He was professor in Montreal and Manchester, but finally returned to Cambridge where he succeeded J. J. Thomson as Cavendish Professor in 1919. 

Even after Becquerel’s discovery that uranium emits a penetrating radiation, the similar characteristics of thorium that the Marie Curie found, and the isolation of polonium and radium by the Curies, the nature of the radioactive radiations remained obscure.[xxii]  Ernest Rutherford was interested and started to research to solve the problem.   In 1900 Rutherford confronted Fredrick Soddy with the findings that thorium was emitting a radioactive gas.  Soddy agreed that the chemical character of the substance needed to be examined.  When examined the gas proved to have no chemical character at all.  Soddy concluded that element thorium was slowly and spontaneously transmuting itself into argon gas.  Soddy and Rutherford had observed the spontaneous disintegration of the radioactive elements, one of the major discoveries in twentieth century physics.  Together they had shown that radioactive materials release energy impulsively because they are going through a process of decay and that through this process they turn into a different material.[xxiii]

Iréne Curie was the oldest daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie.  Her early education was in a cooperative school arranged by Marie Curie for the children of her dearest friends.  She was sent to private school for her secondary education, College Sevigne.  It was during World War One that she gained valuable experience by helping her mother with the operation of mobile X-ray units for the French army and at the Radium Institute with the training of X-ray technicians.  This experience allowed her to become an assistant in the Institute and started independent research in radioactivity.  She met Fredric Joliot at the Institute who had been appointed as assistant to Mme. Curie.[xxiv] 

Fredric Joliot was born into a middle class family.  He was educated to allow him to obtain a favorable position in society.  He attended the Lycée Lakanal where he was remarkably popular.  After his time at Lycée, he decided that he wanted to become an engineer.   To prepare for engineering he attended the École Lavoisier for two years.  He would then enter the School of Physics and Chemistry of the City of Paris.  After graduation from the École he felt unprepared for a life devoted to scientific research and worked for one year at the Arbed steel mills as an engineer.  When his position was terminated he returned to the École and gained the position of assistant to Marie Curie.[xxv] 

When the couple combined forces and started researching together they were told that they had came along too late to learn anything new about radioactivity.  The Joliot-Curies “set about exploiting the Institute’s special asset, a substantial stock of radium.”[xxvi]  By conducting an experiment with beryllium, they would discover that by using their polonium gun, their targets could also yield positrons.  This was the first time that positrons had turned up in nuclear reactions in the laboratory.  This experiment would eventually lead James Chadwick to the discovery of the neutron.  The Joliot-Curies reported their findings at a scientific conference in Brussels in 1933, however, they met resistance.  Neils Bohr urged them to continue their research.  It was only a few weeks later that they had a key breakthrough.  Joiliot explained his findings to a colleague, “I irradiate this target with alpha particles from my source [and] you can hear the Geiger counter crackling.  I remove the source: the crackling ought to stop, but in fact it continues.”[xxvii] This meant that the target of aluminum was continuing to release positrons, lasting for a few minutes and eventually coming to a stop.  This discovery meant that the aluminum had actually become radioactive.  This was the first incidence of artificial radioactivity.  “The phenomenon of radioactivity, which had previously been virtually confined to a few rather exotic elements, had now been extended to some of the most ordinary and familiar elements known to the chemist.”[xxviii]

Ability to Harness Radio-Active Energy

            The ability to harness radioactive energy is one of the most important steps in the process to atomic weaponry.  A vast majority of the foot work was completed in the United States; however, the majority of the intellectual contribution to this aspect of atomic energy, again, came from other countries.  Money and other resources were readily available in the U.S. when compared to the other countries that had, until the Manhattan Project began, controlled the intellectual side of creating the most destructive piece of warfare that the world had ever seen.  If the resources that were available in the United States were available in any other country involved with the foundations of the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project would not have been needed, and another country would have created the bomb. 

German chemist, Otto Hahn, heard the news of the Joliot-Curie experiment and became determined to prove that their findings were wrong.  Hahn, born March 8, 1879, to a glazier in Bockgasse, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, attended Klinger Realeschule.  Hahn entered the preparatory department in the spring of 1885.  His brothers left school after the Primary Examination in order to help their father with his business, but Otto was allowed to continue in hopes he would become an architect.  After taking some classes at a Technical school, his interests in architecture began to fade and his interest in chemistry began to pick up.  After taking his Final Examination, placing third out of ten, he decided to continue with the study of chemistry at the University of Marburg. 

In 1904 Professor Zincke suggested that Hahn consider going to work for the firm of Kalle and Co., which was looking to “engage a young chemist who had some knowledge of English and French.  Zinche urged Hahn to travel to England for six months to improve his English and to go to work for Sir William Ramsay’s laboratory at the University College London.  He followed the recommendations of Zincke.  When he arrived at to work with Ramsay, he was put to work with another German Student, Otto Sackur, on radioactive materials.  Hahn was very successful in his research with Ramsay.  He had discovered ‘radiothorium’ which was 100,000 times as active as thorium.  His success and the enthusiasm of Ramsay led Hahn to become a dedicated researcher and leave the notion of gaining a career in industry. 

Ramsay advised Hahn that he should consider seeking a place at the University of Berlin and wrote a letter of recommendation to his friend Emil Fischer.  Fischer met with Hahn in Berlin and offered him a position in his Institute.  Fischer and Hahn agreed that he would spend six months in Montreal with Ernest Rutherford to improve his knowledge of radioactivity.  After his time with Rutherford he returned to Berlin, where he met Lise Meitner.  Hahn and Meitner worked together on a study of β-radiation from mesothorium.[xxix]   In attempting to prove the findings of the Joliot-Curies wrong, in December 1938, working with associate Otto Strassmann he found that it was true that some atoms of the element uranium produced atoms of the lighter element barium.  Being aware that this challenged all the known laws of physics, he looked to his former co-worker, Lise Meitner, for an explanation. Hahn wrote a letter to Meitner explaining what he had witnessed.

Lise Meitner was born in Vienna, Austria in November 1878.  She was one of eight children raised in Vienna.  Meitner obtained her doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1906.  After completion of her doctorate she spent the following year studying in Berlin with Planck and soon began research on radioactivity with Otto Hahn.  She was assistant to Planck, from 1912 to 1915, at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Berlin.  She was later appointed to head of the Physics Department in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry.  It was at this time that she and Hahn began to research beta decay.  With Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, she was forced to leave Berlin and flee to Sweden.[xxx] She was in Sweden when Hahn’s letter reached her around Christmas in 1938.  Her nephew, Otto Frisch, came to visit and found Meitner sitting at breakfast thinking about the letter from Hahn.  The letter said that “barium was one of the fragments formed by neutron irradiation of uranium.”[xxxi]  As Frisch and Meitner discussed the findings of Hahn, Frisch suggested that Hahn was wrong, however, Meitner did not agree.  She felt that Hahn was “too good a chemist to be wrong.”[xxxii] 

They eventually came to the conclusion that there was no chipping or cracking of the nucleus but it was a process that could be explained by Bohr’s idea that the nucleus was like a liquid drop.  They believed that such a drop could lengthen and divide itself.  They imagined that the liquid drop could be pulled out into the shape of a dumbbell with a waist in the middle and it could continue to elongate and eventually snap into two pieces.[xxxiii] 

Their first reaction was that the surface tension would pull the nucleus back together, however, with the repelling of the protons it would cancel the surface tension out. Frisch and Meitner carried out further experiments which showed that the Uranium-235 fission yielded an enormous amount of energy, and that the fission yielded at least two neutrons per neutron absorbed in the interaction. They realized that this made possible a chain reaction with an unprecedented energy yield. 

When Frisch told Bohr about the experiments and conclusion of Meitner, Bohr realized what Frisch was going to say and “struck his forehead with his hand and exclaimed, ‘Oh what idiots we have been!  We could have foreseen it all!  This is just as it must be!’.”[xxxiv]  Meitner, an Austrian Jew, and Frisch, a refugee of Austria, had devised the theory of fission of uranium, which was needed to have a sustainable chain reaction.

Following the Joliot-Curies’s discovery, young Italian, Ernico Fermi thought that neutrons may be better than alpha particle for bombardment experiments because they had no charge they would neither be drawn nor repelled to or from other particles in the atom. The use of alpha particles requires large amounts of energy because of their positive charge to be effective.  Fermi began to bombard one element after another with neutrons to see the effect it would have.  It took seven tests to get an outcome he was looking for.  He then tested sixty of the ninety known elements, with over forty of them becoming radioactive after being bombarded with neutrons.  His group also made the discovery that when they were activating a silver tube by putting a neutron source inside it that the level of radioactivity changed depending where the activation was taking place.  For example they would get more radioactivity if it was done on a wooden table opposed to  it being done on a metal plate.  After some experimenting on the phenomenon, Fermi suggested to try it in a hole made into a block of paraffin wax.  “The activity was increased fantastically, a hundredfold, as if by some species of black magic.”[xxxv]  After more experiments, Fermi concluded that materials such as water and paraffin wax, which slow the neutrons down, could be called “moderators.”  They moderate the speed of the neutron.[xxxvi]

In 1938 Fermi left Italy to escape the growing Fascist regime for the protection of his family had headed to the United States.  Fermi, working with other physicists at the Metallurgical Laboratory, began work on the hypothesis that by the uranium atom on splitting assumed that the original single atom causing the split produced two neutrons. It would be possible that these two would then collide with other uranium atoms and produce four neutrons, and so the chain of reactions would grow as would the number of neutrons. The process would continue until all uranium atoms were used up. Each nuclear collision releases huge amounts of energy.  In December of 1942, Fermi supervised the first ever controlled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, in a Squash court under one of the University’s athletic fields.  This accomplishment by Fermi meant that nuclear weaponry was possible and it was on the horizon.

            To summarize, it is evident that the intellectual hurdles that had to be crossed in order to advance the field of science to the level it reached during the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, were crossed, not in the United States of America, but in European countries with the brilliant minds that originated there.  It is quite clear that if it had not been for brilliant European minds the atomic bomb would not have been created.  The United States’s contribution, the Manhattan Project, owes its existence and overall success in the bringing of their final product to life, to the physicists and chemists of Europe.  The end of World War Two would have been more drawn out and brutal for the American people if it had not been for these European physicists and chemists.