THE MANHATTAN PROJECT

The Manhattan Project was one of the most significant and secretive scientific endeavours in human history.

The scientists and army generals of those times considered atomic energy as one of the facets of life and it is only a matter of time until it is harvested for either constructive or destructive purposes. Born out of the urgency of World War II, it aimed to harness the power of nuclear fission to create an atomic bomb.

As World War II engulfed the world in chaos, scientists across the globe recognized the potential for nuclear fission, discovered by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1938, to create immensely powerful weapons. The United Nations of America (USA), which always prefers to be on the safer side by holding the bigger stick first, rushed fearing that the Nazi Germany might exploit the scientific breakthrough first. Thus, the Manhattan Project was born under the leadership of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a prominent physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer being the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs.

The scale of the project was unprecedented. It brought together a diverse array of brilliant minds, including some of the most prominent scientists of the time, such as Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, and Niels Bohr. Their combined intellect and collaborative spirit laid the groundwork for the development of the atomic bomb.