![]() ![]() There were no obvious off-the-shelf patterns for this kind of scientific collaboration and organization, so neither the scientists nor the military had secure understandings of what sort of place Los Alamos was.įor the scientists, there was enormous time pressure, because they understood that this bomb had to be built to beat the Germans to it. There were a lot of tensions associated with the relations between science and the military military conceptions of secrecy and security often clashed with scientific expectations of relatively free communication. And that assembling of scientific talent for military purposes had never happened before - certainly not remotely at that scale. “Everybody who was anybody” was there - including many Nobel Prize winners.Īnother thing that was unique about it was that it was a military installation, but one including a great scientific research center. At Los Alamos, the bringing together of some of the world’s greatest talent - not just in physics, but also in computation, mathematics, metallurgy, chemistry, and many sorts of engineering - was unprecedented. SHAPIN: Virtually everything about it was unique. GAZETTE: What was unique about Los Alamos that allowed scientists - like Oppenheimer - to come together to develop such advanced technology? The Manhattan Project is the name collectively given to all the installations involved in designing and assembling the atomic bomb, of which Los Alamos would be the nerve center, and also to the vast plants for the separation of U-235 (at Oak Ridge, Tennessee) and for the production of plutonium (at Hanford, Washington). The Manhattan Project is often identified with Los Alamos, the design center in New Mexico, but it’s important to appreciate that it was a truly enormous nationwide effort. It’s been called the biggest technoscience project in the history of the world: over $2 billion at the time. Army Corps of Engineers and directed by Gen. The project took its name from the Manhattan Engineer District in New York it was run by the U.S. SHAPIN: The Manhattan Project was the name given to the enterprise to build the atomic bomb, starting in the summer of 1942, and culminating in the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs in August 1945. ![]() GAZETTE: Could you give a brief overview of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos? This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science, to learn more about the man behind the charismatic character. Ahead of the release this week of the new biopic “Oppenheimer,” the Gazette spoke with Steven Shapin, the Franklin L. Questions had been raised about his associations with communists and, more importantly, his opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb - he eventually would become a staunch proponent of nuclear arms control. A Harvard-educated theoretical physicist and scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico during World War II, he is often referred to as the “father of the atomic bomb.” But he also had his federal security clearance revoked during the McCarthy era, a disputed decision that was only posthumously reversed last year. Robert Oppenheimer was a complicated man. ![]()
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