


Nazi Germany
In 1938 Otto Hahn, a German chemist, was the first to succeeded in breaking up (fissioning) a uranium atom into lighter, atomically speaking, elements by bombarding it with neutrons. At the time, the idea seemed preposterous, even to him, and he doubted his own test results, but after overcoming his reservations he published it in a scientific journal. It was soon realized that this process could yield enormous amounts of energy. Leo Szilard, a physicist of Hungarian descent, already considered this possibility while staying in London in 1933. Hahn’s discovery, however, clinched the argument for Szilard, now working in the United States, and he was horrified by the possibility that Nazi Germany could develop such a bomb. He then convinced Albert Einstein to approach President Roosevelt to initiate an American atomic research program.
The American scientists were sure from the start that they were in a race against…
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