wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Urged by

Hungarian-born physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wingner, and Edward

Teller, Einstein told Roosevelt about Nazi German efforts to purify

Uranium-235 which might be used to build an atomic bomb. Shortly after

that the United States Government began work on the Manhattan Project.

The Manhattan Project was the code name for the United States effort

to develop the atomic bomb before the Germans did. "The first

successful experiments in splitting a uranium atom had been carried

out in the autumn of 1938 at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in

Berlin"(Groueff 9) just after Einstein wrote his letter. So the race

was on. Major General Wilhelm D. Styer called the Manhattan Project

"the most important job in the war . . . an all-out effort to build an

atomic bomb."(Groueff 5) It turned out to be the biggest development

in warfare and science's biggest development this century. The most

complicated issue to be addressed by the scientists working on the

Manhattan Project was "the production of ample amounts of 'enriched'

uranium to sustain a chain reaction."(Outlaw 2) At the time,

to a public demonstration. "In retrospect that U.S. use of the atomic

dropped. "Harvard explosives expert George B. Kistiakowsky and

out as an option was being looked at. It could capture a free neutron

separated from uranium by chemical techniques,"(6) which would be far

dropping the two atomic bombs on Japan. Arguments defending the

should have warned the Japanese, or that we should have invited them

wave so as to compress the plutonium instantly into a supercritical

weapon."(Szasz 26) The final agreement for the test was that the bomb

Some topics in this essay:
Manhattan Project, Leslie Groves, Hiroshima August, Japan Arguments, Los Alamos, Mountain War, Almighty Words, Seth Neddermeyer, Secretary War, Burro Mountain, atomic bomb, manhattan project, plutonium bomb, los alamos, wrote letter, einstein wrote letter, hiroshima august, supercritical mass, sustain chain, columbia university, separate uranium-235 uranium-238, little boy,