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Manhattan Project And The Development Of The Atomic Bomb

        Just before the beginning of World War II, Albert Einstein
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,
Uranium-235 was hard to extract. Of the Uranium ore mined, only about
1/500 th of it ended up as Uranium metal. Of the Uranium metal, "the
fissionable isotope of Uranium (Uranium- 235) is relatively rare,
occurring in Uranium at a ratio of 1 to 139."(Szasz 15) Separating the
one part Uranium-235 from the 139 parts Uranium-238 proved to be a
challenge. "No ordinary chemical extraction could separate the two
isotopes. Only mechanical methods could effectively separate U-235
from U-238."(2) Scientists at Columbia University solved this
difficult problem. A "massive enrichment laboratory/plant"(Outlaw 2)
was built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. H. C. Urey, his associates, and
colleagues at Columbia University designed a system that...