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“I am become death,
the destroyer of worlds.”
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Quote from Bhagavita attributed to J. Robert Oppenheimer
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“Father of the Atomic Bomb”
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The history of the nuclear age is a series of steps—many
quite small, others of medium stride, and others still veritable
leaps. Discoveries such as the presence of electromagnetic forces
noted by Maxwell to Roentgen’s stumbling onto the presence
of x-rays, to Becquerel finding naturally occurring x-rays from
uranium, to the Curies discovering the key components of are just
a few examples of such steps (Fig. 27–1). From the late
19th century and into the 20th century, several important larger
discoveries were made: Rutherford discovered alpha and beta particles,
and Planck articulated the quantum theory of physics. During that
time fundamental principles of radioactivity were being sorted out;
such as isotopes, radioactive decay, and the properties of the types
of radiation.
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In 1905, the history of science and of the world was altered
irrevocably when Albert Einstein, working full time as a patent
clerk in Bern, Germany, conceived of and derived what is perhaps the
most recognizable equation in history: E = mc2.
Einstein’s theory of relativity had profound implications,
a worthy discussion of which is beyond the scope of this text. For
our purposes, the most important was its inference that enormous energy
is contained in even a single atom. It was not long before the hunt
to access that energy began (Fig. 27–3).
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The critical breakthroughs to harnessing atomic energy came in
the late 1930s. When nuclei were bombarded with slow-moving neutrons,
they became unstable and split into smaller particles. However,
these smaller particles added up to a weight less than that of the
original nuclei. The missing mass had become energy: a vast amount
of energy. The implications of this research, particularly its military
potential was realized quickly in several Western nations, including
Germany, England, and the United States. As the 1930s progressed,
tensions between Hitler’s Germany and other European powers
erupted into World War II and the work of atomic physicists worldwide
became a critical resource for the war effort.
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The story of the development of nuclear weapons is a fascinating
and pivotal one that altered the history of the 20th-century world.
During WWII, both the Nazis and the Americans raced to develop viable
nuclear weapons (Fig. 27–2...