If Oppenheimer Didn’t Invent the Atomic Bomb, Who Did?
Its often quoted that Robert Oppenheimer invented the atomic bomb, but the theory for a practical nuclear bomb had been drawn up long before Oppenheimer led the scientific side of the Manhattan Project. So if Oppenheimer didn't invent the bomb who did?
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This is a re-upload due to errors in the original
Liking your integrity.
Well I hope to watch this every day over coming week :))))
Really appreciate your care for the quality of your work! :)
Never noticed.
What errors?
Oppenheimer was essentially the project manager
Exactly, one with the requisite knowledge to recognise if anything was going down the wrong road.
Like a good project manager he knew who was cleverer than him and knew better in certain areas. Pulled everyone’s knowledge together.
As the movie shows
Project Manager, managing 600,000 physicist, working to make the product, a weapon of mass destruction.
Yes, specifically the project manager that succeeded. There were lots of other project managers that failed.
Born in 1958, and having read a ton about the a-bomb, and seen probably every documentary there ever was about it, I've never in my life known of anyone who claimed that Oppenheimer invented it.
Yup, same here. That's like saying Wernher von Braun invented the rocket.
Oppo just held the loose conglomeration of temperamental science guys together. There were a lot of Marxist/communist adherents in that program feeding information out to the Soviets, too.
Oppenheimer was NOT the inventor of the bomb. It was developed by a group called the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer was tasked by the US Army and the White House to be the head of the project at Los Alamos. The group was setup for two bomb theories the Implosion and Gun Type. And... they did not really know if they would work.
I think it was termed Father of the atomic bomb. Which would be accurate as he presided over a lot of different mentalities.
@@bryanst.martin7134 But that too would be incorrect as "father of the atomic bomb" would be misleading; it was collaborative. It's like a few certain CEOs/management claiming they invented something when it was really R&D or whichever group of scientists & engineers.
Leo Szilard was a Hungarian-German-American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea in 1936, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb.
Oppenheimer was an administrator organizing the scientist, with over all understanding of the project "Manhattan" project! Teller took over for the Hydrogen Bomb, Oppenheimer was reluctant and was hanging around with women who were socialist and communist! (He was declared a security risk, and Teller wanted his job!) One of the men who wired the first bomb told me! I've read , similar information! ☢️🚀
Please, forget about the letter from Leo Szilard signed by Albert Einstein! That letter only caused some little academic research program later on, but it didn't cause the start of the Manhattan project! The secret memorandum from Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch from March 1940 (already containing enough physics to estimate the yield and time scale of an explosion set free by the exponential chain reaction of the fission of 1 kg of U-235) was way more important to make things happen than the Szilard paper. The Frisch-Peierls memorandum finally became central part of the M.A.U.D. committee report in July 1941. That report basically already contained the blueprint for the so-called gun design. The UK M.A.U.D. report got to the US (by Mark Oliphant) and get started the S-1 committee which turned into the Manhattan project later on.
Oppenheimer was a competent theoretical physicist..who actually made original (but not groundbreaking) contributions to many domain including notable work on blackholes. He was not the inventor of atomic bomb, but he was not a "mere" project manager either. He had the foresight and knowledge to evaluate ideas..and bring people and resources together. He was also involved in Nuclear physics.
Agreed. Calling him a 'project manager' however accurate does not fully sum up the tremendous amount of work he did and his overwhelming influence on the design and building of the bomb. He was a man of great charisma of exactly the right kind to get numerous often mercurial geniuses working together on the same page, which alone was a phenomenal feat. Add in the fact of his technical and scientific brilliance and his dogged determination to get the job done as quickly as possible and it's easy to see that Oppenheimer was a prodigy and a singular pillar of scientific achievement. It's hard to imagine getting the job done without him, without having to hire five or ten extremely skilled and talented scientists to replace him. He was the man of the hour and probably the most significant right man in the right place at the right time. He didn't "invent" the atomic bomb, but was without doubt or argument the "father of the bomb." He knew this and the realization horrified him, as did his former hubris when they were developing the bomb. He wasn't exaggerating when he quoted the Bhagavad-gita: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." He knew that if the human race destroyed itself with this new weapon, no single man in history would be more to blame than him.
It was as group effort, not a single person should be called the "father of the bomb". Many worked on it from theoretical physicists, to explosive lens experts like John von Neumann, and the countless other workers in the mines, infrastructure, etc.
Fermi deserves more than a mere honorable mention. Fermi was the first to actually harness nuclear energy with his design (and building with his own hands) the first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago in 1942. As he himself would say, he had "intuito fenomenale" (Italian for "phenomenal intuition") as to the workings of sub-atomic physics and everyone who worked at Los Alamos, New Mexico, were admirers of his insights into the making of the bomb. (Some mention should have been made of von Neumann who gave mathematical proofs showing which direction research should proceed.)[EDIT TO CLARITY MEANING: My simple point is that Fermi was literally “hands on” in building the nuclear reactor because he himself physically worked with his hands building it. When graphite blocks were determined to be needed for the reactor, Fermi himself lifted the first blocks into place. When he found that the blocks became too heavy for him to lift, he enlisted some of the beefy players of the University football team to lift the blocks. Fermi was seen many times crawling around these graphite blocks and literally getting his hands dirty. As the book “The Last Man Who Knew Everything” says on Page 184, and I quote: [Fermi] played an active part in its construction, piling graphite bricks and cans of uranium oxide alongside the rest of the team.” THIS IS A RECENT EDIT TO CLARIFY WHAT I MEANT AS FERMI BEING "HANDS ON" ]
Leó Szilárd (born Leó Spitz) (Budapest-Terézváros, February 11, 1898 - La Jolla, California, May 30, 1964) Hungarian and American physicist and inventor. He was the first physicist to realize that the nuclear chain reaction (and thus the atomic bomb) could be created. Not Fermi!Fermi AND Szilárd! In the Manhattan Project, Szilárd and Fermi were tasked with controlling the chain reaction. In 1942, the atomic bonfire, the world's first operational nuclear reactor, was built with 2x2x4 meter graphite bricks and uranium spheres in a 10x20 meter wallball hall under one of the stands of the Stagg Field rugby stadium of the University of Chicago. The atomic bonfire, the world's first regulated nuclear reactor, operated with a power of 200, later 30,000 W. The date of his critical condition: December 2, 1942 at 3:57 p.m., thus the second ignition of humanity, the release of nuclear energy by humans, was realized.
@@barnabashuszko9108i had the rare priveledge of actually working with one of the physicists on Fermi's team in 1981. He described his work as "performing calculations in order to ensure Fermi that the reaction, once started, would not continue and destroy the entire planet".We both worked at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in 1981. The work was a project for NASA called the Fault Isolation and Monitoring System for the TDRSS facility at White Sands. His name was Cloyd Marvin.
They never liked italians.
@@barnabashuszko9108 I feel like Rutherford's comments in the lithium-7 article, which Szilárd said inspired his conceptualization, can't reasonably be read in a way which suggests that Rutherford wasn't talking about neutron chain reactions. So I'd say Rutherford should get as much credit.
@@clarkpj1 Nice to read accounts like YOURS which come from somebody who actually knows his stuff.
John von Neumann said of Oppenheimer that 'sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it'.
That was brilliant.
@@asdzt123 JvN was rather well known for being brilliant
what did he meant by that ?
@@marvin2678it means that he thought Oppenheimer was humble bragging by saying he did a bad thing when really he was proud of it
I thought exactly the same when I read the quote "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” people honestly believe he genuinely regretted, it's an oldest trick in the narcissist book
Oppenheimer was a theoretical physicist. He was able to bring other experts to the table who compartmentalized their work in an effort to make the first atom bomb.
Or a political physicist? 😁
You're being rational. That's not acceptable with this crowd of ignoramuses.
Absolutely Bob the builder! You are not a Bagnasco are you? Looking for my uncle. My Grandfather Charles Salvatore Bagnasco told them how much it would cost the government.
He also understood the different aspects of the project including the engineering of the ordnance aspect of the devices. He wasn't the most accomplished physicist, maybe, but he understood all the different facets of the project and apparently saw how pivotal it would be.
Didn’t Du-Pont run the operation?
What an amazing video bringing together in a short time the top developments that led to the bomb and what it took authors thousands of pages to explain in various other books. Well done!!!
The photo at 10:50 is Bush and Truman. Not Bush and Roosevelt.
Correct. That's Harry Truman, not FDR. Well ya know, all Americans look alike to citizens of Ole' Blighty. ;p
That kinda ruined it for me.
He's a Brit.
I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I cleaned my glasses and looked again. Yep, that's Truman. : )
Exactly, but I took it as a joke like Truman holding up the newspaper that read “Dewey defeats Truman”
Feynman's account of working on the A-bomb in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" is amazing, by the way.
I love that famous picture of Feynman sitting next to Oppenheimer in some meeting. He looks like a little kid.
There's also a video on YT of a speech Feynman gave called "Los Alamos from below" that's quite interesting (and funny).
@@henryj.8528 Thanks for the reference. That was a great video. Feynman is a delight. I can really identify with some of what he recalls; I worked with Hollerith Cards too when I studied CompSci back in the 70's.
This is Feynman giving a "lecture" about his time there. It's brilliantly funny and I highly recommend it. Richard Feynman Lecture -- "Los Alamos From Below" - kzhead.info/sun/qL1mpZWpsISDaK8/bejne.html
The idea behind the implosion mechanism was first suggested by Tolman and Serber but the other guys were not convinced it would work. Neddermeyer improved the concept and convinced Oppenheimer that it was the best shot and Oppenheimer decided to go with it
John von Neumann had a huge and core contribution to make the implosion concept operational. Actually Oppenheimer asked him to elaborate some theory for the "well- coordinated" implosion waves and make calculations when the Los Alamos team had got stuck.
The backstory was a lot more complicated than that. The first bomb designed was "Tall Boy" - it was a plutonium gun design. But they couldn't manage the constant decay of Pu, so they punted to the uranium "Little Boy" design. The problem was that they weren't going to be able to refine enough uranium at Oak Ridge for multiple Little Boy designs, so the only other option to use Plutonium pits was to compress the core. Tolman, Serber and many others toiled for years to build the modular implosion core that's shown throughout the movie (the segmented soccer ball design) with the hope that it would uniformly compress a plutonium pit, but failed miserably. There are pages of mangled metal test pits you can see on the web. Oppenheimer was on his last straw, called in Von Neuman, who came up with an incredible stacked lensing design, based on the mathematics of optical collimation. The design was so complex, with multiple layers and shapes of explosives necessary for an even compression, but they didn't have computers, so they had to have armies of women on adding machines, calculating the shapes of the implosion slices. Even when Von Neumann nailed the shape of the explosive slices, it took over 20,000 attempts to cast the explosives precisely enough to evenly compress the pit. The reason for the Trinity test is because they weren't sure they really had a working implosion system, and it would have been incredibly embarrassing to drop the second bomb, and it didn't detonate. They never tested the gun design (Little Boy), because it was so simple.
The 3 people who actually invented the implosion mechanism was James L tucker, Seth Neddermeyer and Hugh Bradner. Von Neumann was impressed with the concept so him with the help of Edward teller made a sound mathematical model which convinced Oppenheimer to start the project
Terrific video. Provides a lot of details that I had not previously come across.
It was a very complex process with lots of brilliant people making contributions, I think that by far the person that did the most to make it practical was Enrico Fermi.
I wanna know who was the real Illinois Enema Bandit.
@@donwayne1357 Damn you...I shouldnt had googled it.
Ahh no.. Jon von Neumann…
@@synthclub Fermi created the first fission reaction, the first large scale reactor and provided both the enriched uranium and plutonioum of the first bombs, Von Neumann being of course a genius and the father of modern computers made improvements and designed the first hidrogen bombbut was not critical (pun intended) to the Manahattan project, without Fermi there was no bomb, without Von Neumann the work simply would had taken more time...and Von Neumann worked with the piece of crap who gave the nuclear secrets to the soviets, a major stain on his service sheet.
*Otto Hahn
Fermi was like, thanks for taking the heat, Oppy!
As always, an outstanding bit of research and excellent delivery.
Thank you Sir. You filled in a few things that I never knew. Keep up the good work.
Good video. I'd like to add that Leo Szilard probably came up with the idea for the letter to the US president (as well as how a chain reaction could work), and Einstein was asked to sign it to give it more wight. He also came up with the idea of mutual total destruction as a method to convince countries not to use any atomic weapon in the future. To have so much bombs that it will surely make the idea of using one, an impossibly bad one. Hence no one launched any since. And yes, Oppenheimer did not invent the bomb... this was a group effort by many scientists all over the world.
The letter was absolutely Szilard's idea. Szilard is such a fascinating character. General Groves HATED him because of his disregard of compartmentalization rules, had him tailed and spied on and even drafted a letter declaring him an enemy alien interring him for the war but kept it under wraps out of fear of pissing off Fermi and the other scientists working on the bomb. There needs to be a movie on Leo. He and Einstein were partners in invention, he switched to biology late in life, he predicted the end of WW1 with Russia collapsing and the west winning AS A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD BOY, so many interesting facts on Szilard.
@@BoogsMcNoogsSzilárd is my fav scientist. I absolutely agree, he deserves a movie.👍
Mutual assured destruction (MAD) has become a less certain strategy with the introduction of non-state actors with nothing to lose. Also, the huge destructive capacity means that single non-rational players can create huge destruction. I cannot see any path to safety for humanity. Though the bomb has not been used since WWII, it is not clear how to prevent the use of the vastly more destructive bombs of today and tomorrow.
@@jeechun Me too. Him and Rutherford are idols of mine.
@@BoogsMcNoogs Probably a more interesting character than Oppenheimer, along with Fermi, von Neumann, and even Teller. I'd love a movie not centered on any one character but telling the story from the very beginnig, from the revolution in physics starting with the 20th century, for example starting with Planck and ending with the H bomb and cold war. I'm afraid that would be a film for physicists and engineers, not much appeal for anyone else.
Strangely, this is the first time I've ever heard of Oppenheimer referred to as "the inventor of the atomic bomb". The term I've always heard has been "the father of", which seems quite appropriate for his role.
Yes, I've never heard him referred to as its "inventor." It was obviously a hugely complex project, and there were hundreds of "inventors."
All the youtubers are chasing the hype because the new movie/documentary about him is coming out soon
@@burntnougat5341 Another one? Damn, he is popular at the moment, it must be Oppenheimer month or something.
Agreed. The title of this video is a fake myth.
That’s the only reason I opened this suggested video and went right to the comments. I never knew anyone thought he invented it.
Great video. Thanks for naming all the scientists, their country of origin, the science and details involved.
Hungarian scientists played a huge role. They read the paper of the German scientists Otto Hahn and coauthors in 1938, realising this meant that the bomb was possible and that is when Szilárd Leó wrote the letter (and took it to Einstein to sign it and make it more important) that secured the funding for the Manhattan project. There were many Hungarians in the Manhattan Project, Szilárd Leó, Wigner Jenő, Teller Ede and of course Neumann János who was indispensable for the calculations making the implosion possible.
What I usually try to explain people is that Oppenheimer's role in the development of the a bombs (remember there were two types) is similar to that of Eisenhower in Europe's war theatre. He coordinated characters like Patton, Bradley and Montgomery, all of whom were greater generals than him. In very much the same way, Oppenheimer coordinated the job of some of the greatest physicists, mathematicians and engineers of his time.
Like the role “king of kings” He’s the individual who organizes other individuals who are all exceptional in their work and intelligence
10:53 This photograph shows Vannevar Bush with President Harry Truman not President Franklin D. Roosevelt as stated.
@@jtgd And that individual was general Marshall the US Army Chief of Staff.
Like ordering Devers to not invade Germany from Strasburg in the early fall of '44?
@@jtgd Exactly!
Terrific context - Thank you. I'd like to see this shown in theatres before the main feature begins!
Good video, and excellent summary. Like lots of complicated inventions and scientific discoveries , it really was a big team effort. Summarised history often only catches those who were the managers or leaders of the projects, and glosses over the lots of small steps by many others to get to the end goal. The well worn phrase "if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." (attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, but also sort of said by others) is a pretty good summary.
Well, a Hollywood movie is not a summary of history.
@karlschmied6218 yeah well done captain obvious, just like this video we are watching is an account of history, and not a movie.
A key fact that is often overlooked is at the onset of WWII ; it was British Atomic Research that was by far the closest to creating a Nuclear Bomb. The "core reason" why the British handed over this knowledge and expertise to the Americans was that there was the fear that Britain could possibly be invaded. It is therefore a fact that the British were working with the Americans ,well before the Manhattan Project. The Atomic Bomb threat the Nazis presented turned out to be Non-Existent ; the Germans Research was as much as a decade behind that of the Allies in 1945.
the 'tube alloys' project
Japane was sending terms of surrender before we dropped the bomb. There terms were to keep the Emperor and constitution; we would only accept absolute surrender but in the end we let them keep the Emperor. If we had been willing to negotiate we might have come to the same place.
@@flufffycow Japan was desperately trying to surrender, on the final terms, up to three weeks before the bombs were dropped. The US was given all of the British Atomic research and key scientists on the understanding that it would be shared after the war. The US reneged on the deal. The US asset stripped the British Empire as part of Lend Lease to ensure that wouldn't be a post-war rival any longer. It also didn't pay a vast proportion of the already knocked down prices they acquired the assets for. Apparently, they saved our donkeys in both world wars. I've never understood the US obsession with donkeys.
@@simonengland6448 Special Relationship my rosy red arse...
@@J.K.W-zx6zvPost war documents and studies have shown clearly that Germany was not close to creating a bomb at all.
Paul, I've done a great deal of research into the making of the atomic bomb. This is by far the best, most concise video I've ever seen explaining what actually occurred! From this point forward I will create a link to this video for anyone that I speak to that's interested in what actually happened. For anyone else that's interested in more detail, the making of the atomic bomb book by Richard Rhodes is an excellent read.
agree
Finishing that fat book from Rhodes is on my bucket list. But I did make it all the way through _Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military-Industrial Complex_ (2015), I think because it's a side of the story less often told.
I think what is incredible about this story is just how much science that was happening between the UK, Germany and France at the time. The US simply had the economic engine and the resources to convert these ideas into reality and ultimately demonstrated this. Nothing more, nothing less.
Wrong
to be fair, the US did make a contribution and after the war, their size and funding put them ahead.
Nonsense. There were leading physicists in the US as well, of which Oppenheimer was one.
So did the Soviets ..except they had to deal with the world's largest invasion to Stalin stopped Kurxhatovs research. There were no Hitlers armies on Americsn soil so naturally they were able to build it ....
@@timothycushing5473 But not wrong
There were four lead scientists on the Manhattan project. Oppenheimer was one of them but the other three was Edward Teller and Szilárdi the two Hungarians and Fermi the Italian scientist. Oppenheimer was in charge due to being the only American born of the four scientists. The real credit however goes to Teller and Szilárdi of developing the atom bomb. Edward Teller went on to develop the hydrogen bomb in the 1950's and the neutron bomb in the 1970's. Oppenheimer was never been evolved in the development of the hydrogen or the neutron bomb.
In 1943 workers were ordered to manufacture fine-sintered nickel mesh at Clydach factory in Wales. Vital for capturing isotope U235 to make it into a manageable size to use / transport.
Groves was bright enough to realise that he was not bright enough to organise the right people and point them in the the right direction. He recognised the organisational and motivational qualities in Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer in turn was able to recognise problems and was able to recruit the right people to solve them.
That is Pretty much dead spot on w Groves. He isn't given enough credit, he wasn't the dolt general that he if often portrayed as. He was a logistics expert,he was responsible for building the Pentagon, and he was a trained engineer from MIT. He also had to be a buffer between Oppemheimer and his bosses.
Fun fact Oppenheimer was just the director of the Manhattan Project, the one we can say, invented the nuclear bomb and first, the first nuclear reactor, was Fermi. Enrico Fermi.
Nope. Chadwick's team at Liverpool University and Oliphant's at Birmingham University were working on how to make the bomb. Birmingham pipped Liverpool.
@@johnburns4017 The true answer is no one discovered the bomb, it was a chain of discoveries and advances that culminated in the Manhattan project. The germans discovered fission first, for example. Fermi was one of the greatest, as a theoretician and as an experimentalist, which is unusual.
H.G. Wells was apparently the first to propose the concept of an atomic bomb. Leo Szilard was the first scientist to realize that a bomb might be possible. See this video at the 2:20 time stamp. He received a U.S. patent on the concept in 1934, just as stated in this video.
@@asdzt123 Fermi's creation of the first chain reaction did deserve a mention. Or maybe deserves its own video.
Yep @@johnburns4017
Thanks for providing a balanced review of the history of the A-bomb
Thanks for putting this on youtube-enjoyed it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The first step, nuclear fission, was made in Italy in via Panisperna Rome on 22 october 1934 by Nobel Prize Enrico Fermi and his team (Pontecorvo, Rasetti, Amaldi, Segre and Maiorana). He actively partecipated up to the terminal phase in Chicago in 1942.
Yep
Gratzee, luv Italiano Romano technologee, Mumma Mio Ducati, M aVee Augusta, Moto Guzzzzi, et al belisimo,.....Veni, vidi, vici.... Viva Italia!! Shame about all your new immigrants though....scooozie.
No it's not true German scientist Otto Hahn is the first person to discover nuclear fission in 1938
Hahn was not the first. Irene Joliet-Curie was the first of those working with Uranium nuclei to detect "smaller" elements as products of the reaction observed, the reaction being nuclear fission. However, neither she nor Hahn knew what was happening (fission), so neither described it. When Hahn, a chemist advised Lise Meitner, his long-time associate and a physicist, who by 1938 had left Germany, of elements much smaller than uranium resulting from the reactions observed, Meitner correctly devised and explained the conversion of mass into energy that is nuclear fission. Carloloffreda above is correct that Enrico Fermi and the Via Panisperna Boys were the first to observe fission, using their source of radium. However, they did not correctly describe it either. Fermi had several discoveries. He derived the Law of Beta decay, and discovered a new force acting on nuclei that he called the force of weak interaction. However, he actually thought he was building larger elements starting with uranium, not splitting uranium as he actually was. Besides Lise Meitner, another genius of the early twentieth century physicists was one of Fermi's underlings, Ettore Majorana, who discovered both the neutron and the mechanism, mechanics and energy content of the binding energy of the nucleus, although he did NOT receive formal credit for either of these discoveries, because he never bothered to formally present them to the scientific community
Discovering atomic fission or producing artificial atomic fission? Because as far as I know it was Cockcroft and Walton that split the atom.
Cheers Paul, you always have the top content on YT. Hope you're doing well.
Thanks. Watched Oppenheimer yesterday, and really enjoyed this video today.
Another key fact to the timeline.....oliphant flew to usa on 5aug41 to find out why the usa was ignoring the maud report. Oliphant found lyman briggs had filed the report. Oliphant then got allison and lawrence on board and oppenheimer checked and confirmed some of the findings. Thats when the project could be said to have actually commenced. Lawrence later suggested oliphant deserved a medal for his efforts.
thanks, that was a great video...I'd love to see your take on either the process Oppenheimer used to build his team of scientist or maybe just a video outlining the work of the key players in the development of the bomb. Either works for me. The key players are often over looked in favour of the organizer or the person with the nicest haircut.
Great as usual. Born in 1957 I was fascinated by science. Eventually becoming an engineer and now retired. I saw the movie July 21st, 2023 and I think it told a true story with accuracy. Oppenheimer appeared more (to me) as a great project manager. The very thing I have done on large scale telcom projects around the globe. He was brillant no doubt.
he was brilliant..but even with all his brilliance..he still let them catch him up in their warmongering tub thumping...a realization that did not hit him until the first bomb dropped on Japan....
@@NuLiForm That's an assumption. It was well known that Hitler and the Nazis were working on such a device, and they had to be defeated. It was a desperate race to get there first. That the bomb was deployed after the Nazis effectively were beaten was a choice made by Truman and his administration, not by Oppie or the the physicists who worked on the bomb.
What a project! What a project manager!! A project with more than 130 thousand people directly involved!!!
good video, great explanation on the topic.
A thoroughly interesting and educating 16 minutes; well presented as usual. Thanks Paul.
Good response to Hollywoods attempt to put a name and face behind what in reality was created by much more faces and non Krypto names . To all the egg heads commenting that they knew all the faces already ; good for you , however 99 percent of us do not !
Here here. Excellent presentation
@@mctwain5319 Well, it wasn't that long ago and most of the other faces are very famous in certain circles. And these people probably have more pictures of them floating around the internet than you do. When I was a student I had the opportunity to meet some who worked on the Manhattan project (Teller and Seaborg being the most well-known), but my field of study was particle physics. So, yes, I knew the names and faces of many (plus they were in a lot of the books I have). And my wife doesn't think my head is egg shaped. (Usually she just calls me a blockhead.) So there.
Very good video which rightly gives credit to the wider body of work done by many from the previous decades of the twentieth century. Anyone interested in this should read 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes a seminal work of great detail on the subject.
@@mctwain5319 I'm pleased Oppenheimer wasn't played by Will Smith or Denzel Washington. With a subplot about gay scientists fighting against oppression.
He was in charge, does not mean he did it alone. It means it was his responsibility to tell everyone else what to do.
Definitely. The term 'father of' does not imply that he alone invented the atomic bomb. If we think about the traditional role of fathers, a father leads the family, Oppenheime lead the family of scientists that put previous research and tests into practical reality. There are obviously people who make the mistake of thinking that Oppenheimer invented the A-bomb. Unfortunately, it appears to be a fairly commonly held belief. I believe that videos like this are important to correct that mistaken belief.
Germany has so many talented people back then. Look at them today nothing new discovery.
@@madMARTYNmarsh1981 Not to mention that figuring out how to do it vs actually making it work are two very distinct things. They built whole reactors from scratch, just to obtain the Plutonium needed. I mean for Ch sake, this was really enormous project, no matter how you look at it.
It was a British and Irish physicist, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, who split the atom and Openheimer realised that this meant a chain reaction was possible.
If you watched the video you will learn what actually happened. Try watching the video before commenting next time champ
Good video, it's nice to see some more of the history being spread, rather than accounts that feel like they are designed to project one marketing style narrative. A few corrections: the MAUD committee was not lead by Neils Bohr, he was not a member. It was named for an obscure reference to a housekeeper in one of Bohr's letters. The Tizard mission did not take the MAUD committee reports which described the first detailed design and manufacture of a nuclear bomb to the USA, they were written later (mid 1941), and when passed to the USA sat ignored in an administrators safe. Tizard took the Frisch-Peierls memorandum, which is a rough plan of what a viable bomb is, rather than the developed research and characterisation of the MAUD committee reports. It's probably best to describe the Tizard mission as a wake up call, as the USAs military technology was very patchy in 1940 and it was best to not repeat Churchills first world war experience, where britain and france were providing much of the american troops technical equipment when they inevitably became involved. After the MAUD committee reports were sent to the USA, Mark Oliphant went to the USA to pursue the surprising lack of response to the obvious breakthrough shown in the MAUD committee reports. Mark Oliphant then was then the person to spread in the USA that it was practical to build a nuclear weapon, which appears to have been the trigger to changing gear into a large scale production effort. These details mainly concern the Uranium based design, the USA had been expecting a simple gun-type plutonium bomb to be a better route, but had made the mistake of ignoring the less desirable isotopes of synthesised Plutonium, which made it a dubious short term project for a bomb.
The A bomb, beyond the physics of fission and chain reaction, is mostly an engineering and manufacturing challenge, and not an easy one at all, especially for implosion devices. That’s what makes them so difficult to make from scratch for a new country without previous experience or detailed design hints obtained by espionage. Which is what the Soviets basically did.
The Soviets didn't copy the allies atomic bomb , they used the layered cake format, the spy supplied information only confirmed the form of implosion.
Einstein did not understand the bomb, it was Szilard who wrote the letter to Rosevelt and then took it to Einstein. Szilard expplained everything to Einstein who then signed the letter.
It was the Australian Mark Oliphant on the (Tizard mission) that informed Leo Szilard to push the Americans to produce the bomb.
Fantastic summary! Thank you.
Great video! Really enjoyed the content. FYI your label at around 10:45 is incorrect. The picture shows then Vice President Harry Truman but the text says President Roosevelt.
Great video. Britain came up with more than just the theory though. An ICI scientist developed the gaseous diffusion and centrifuges needed for enrichment of U238. The first plant ever in the World was in Wales. A lot of the British scientists went out to work on the Manhattan project but never get a mention.I think if the USA hadn't come into the war Churchill would have ended up nuking Berlin.
James Chadwick was involved in initiating the Uranium Hexafluoride work at ICI. A Few people from Metrovik went to Wales for a while & then on to the US Manhatten project
Amazing video. Thank you!
Very nice video. As far as I know Fermi had a huge role in assessing the role of slow neutrons. Most likely another case of strict collaboration
The invention of the A-bomb was a team effort. Oppie lead that team, but there were many many others involved. And not just in Los Alamos. Oakridge and other sites played key roles.
Hanford, Washington was another site.
Very good and very true. Alas even tho there is a picture of her, you don't mention that Lise Meitner was the first person to explain what Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann saw was Fission, she even gave it the name Fission. Published in Nature Feb. 1939. This was such a sensation when Neils Bohr realized what it meant he kept it quite , for a while.
The story of her life, being passed over.
wait what
Einstein didn't write that letter, he just agreed to sign it. Next, the omission of Lise Meitner is more than strange. Beyond that, just like the Oppenheimer movie, pure admiration for the "great hero", but not a word or picture of the over 200,000 victims, mostly civilians, in Horishima and Nagasaki.
The atomic bomb is the result of the addition of the work of many scientists, but maybe Enrico Fermi is who has more merits to be called "the father of the atomic bomb" because he made the first "atomic pile", a fundamental part of the mechanism of an atomic bomb.
One correction: Einstein was concerned Germany was working on a bomb but only put his signature on the letter to FDR. Leo Slizard penned the letter and had the wherewithal to get it to FDR. Gen Groves didn’t like Slizard and threw him out of the project. The government did purchase his chain reaction patent .
Uranium enrichment (the separation of isotopes) at 8:58, was for the Manhattan project not done by using ultra centrifuges as shown, that technology was not ready. It was done by gas diffusion
Thank you for the educational video. Just one comment: Oppenheimer is known as "The Father of the Atomic Bomb", not the inventor. As other commentors have said, he was the classic definition of a Project Manager. He bought the scientific teams together, made decisions , managed logistics and interfaced between the politicians and the military.
Brilliantly explained - as usual.
Great overview of the development of the atomic bomb. I agree Oppenheimer's involvement with the Manhattan Project was key to its success. I was not aware folks think Oppenheimer invented it. Once Neutron's were discovered physicists, as you pointed out, knew a bomb was possible.
People just want simple awnsers and avoid any nuance or deeper thinking.
Most physicists did not believe the bomb was possible.
@@yuothineyesasian that's weird because both the US and Germany had every physicist they could get their hands on working on this, so I have no idea where you get that idea from
@@codyglass809 US (and British)
@@ronhall9394 ok. Us, Brits, and the Germans. Point was clearly physicist thought it was possible
Oppenheimer was chosen because he was rare. He held both genius intellect and charisma.
And clearly figured out how to manage the project, even if he had to invent on the fly. It was a desperate effort, because when they started, everyone was concerned that the Nazis had a head start and were working on their own A Bomb. If they got there first, it was game over and the Nazis would have won the war, with obvious cataclysmic consequences.
He is only top of the iceberg as this video explained Oppenheimer's position in the invention of A-bomb. The mix of theory and ingriedience made by Italians, Germans and Danish but Oppenheimer luckily and smart enough to collect team of fathers of quamtum physicians and brilliant engineers.
Just like any significant engineering project, the project manager gets the credit if it succeeds or the blame if it fails. The team is critical.
Great video and important to make these points - the Manhattan Project was a multinational joint project lead by the US military, it had thousands of people working directly on it. Pedantic point, but the photo at 10:46 is Busch with (then) Vice President Truman, not Roosevelt.
I think your premise is actually wrong: maybe different now because movie? But as far as I can remember, unless you are pretty much totally ignorant about science, he was referred to as the “father” of the atomic bomb. As you describe he’s certainly not the inventor, & it may be a fine distinction but I think that’s actually pretty fair description of his impact on its development.
And it's not like anyone anywhere could be ignorant of science.
Your wrong it’s balsa wood 🪵 pellets
Richard Rhodes'"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" is masterpiece that shows the behind-the-scenes workings of the Project. Rhodes followup book "Dark Sun" gives much attention to the H-bomb, Soviet espionage, and the hearings about Oppenheimer's security clearance.
During the Cold War, many remote Soviet lighthouses in Arctic were powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). These had the advantage of providing power day or night and did not need refuelling or maintenance. However, after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, there are no official records of the locations or condition of all of these lighthouses. As time passes, their condition is degrading; many have fallen victim to vandalism and scrap metal thieves, who may not be aware of the dangerous radioactive contents. If possible please make video about this. Love from India
Great overview! Although, Leo Szilard was also the one who got Einstein to write the letter. And he later worked hard for nuclear disarmament.
It was the Australian Mark Oliphant on the (Tizard mission) that informed Leo Szilard to push the Americans to produce the bomb.
Ernest Rutherford worth a bigger mention....he got a Nobel Prize
Good interview with Mark Oliphant about his life, if you skip through to last 1/4 explains a lot
The shirt you are wearing is perfect for this video! Thank you for this information setting me straight! Very interesting! It is very frightening what they were playing with!
VERY WELL DONE. THANKS
These things do not have 1 "inventor". They are the result of decades of research by many different people. And then a project with hundreds of people working, and a director and managers. This is the way these things are done.
Ditto. Von Braun and the Saturn V. Some the physics would go back to Newton.
Exactly. There are breakthroughs made by certain individuals, however ultimately monumental inventions like this are the work of many many brilliant minds coming together.
The letter wasnt written by Einstein, but by Leo Szilard. Einstein only sign it.
You could draw a comparison to Edison who took the credit for many inventions but actually had a team under him making many of the inventions.
Yes, it was Swan who invented the light bulb in England . Edison improved the filament.
@@johnridgeway5265 backed by American courts and bribes presumably
Excellent channel. Subscribed.
Good video. A few points, the British Atom Bomb project started in 1939, the first project with its aim to make an A-bomb. The USA wanted to be in on this project once they knew they were in the war, which morphed into the Manhattan project. Manhattan was supposed to be a joint project - which the USA shunned the British eventually eliminating them. The US rather went to the British rather than the other way around, especially when they knew the British were ahead having a solution.
Indeed. I believe the fake name for the project was something like 'London Tube Alloys' or Alloy Tubes or something. One of the physicists was a woman who was caught in a Soviet Communist Honey Trap in Grantchester, Cambridge. She fled to Australia and was eventually arrested for treason around 2003.
@@realMaverickBuckley MAUD Committee. The A-bomb project was named _Tube Alloys._
They didn't shun the british scientists until after the bomb was developed and dropped. By then it didn't matter anyway.
that same narrative has played out a couple of times since... when will Brits learn what "special relationship" _really_ means?
@@DrWhom When will the Yanks learn that in WW2 in science the Yanks were nowhere. That is the: A-bomb, radar, jet engine, etc. Look at what the British _gave_ to the USA *_free_* via Tizard alone. *NOTHING* came east across the Atlantic. Nothing. Stop trying to change history. With Hollywood leading the way.
"Sorry lads, can't have you working on that thing that we're developing to spot planes as they come over the channel, you are German after all. You'll just have to work on this top secret, high security bomb project that will change the course of history instead". I love wartime logic 🤣
Why are the British and German scientists such outstanding theorists? Excellent vid, thanks.
It rains a lot here, gives us time to think ☕🧐👍🇬🇧
I finished High School in Los Alamos NM, where the bombs were designed. Got to see some of the early computers, Eniac, for one, and walk through a particle accelerator and a nuclear reactor. Fantastic place for a science oriented kid. I played my fist USCF (Chess) tournament there, against a British scientist named James Tuck, who was the first guy to suggest the idea of an explosive shell to contain the Plutonium in a bomb long enough for it to go full nuclear before blowing itself apart. I was so lucky to get to spend two years there.
Tube Alloys was the British project all of which was handed to the US in 1940
It was 1942 actually. The Americans thought they could do without the British after the British told them how to make the bomb. Of course they could not. Chadwick, Penney, Peierls, Oliphant and other British scientists were vital, being integral in the bomb development, despite not wanting them there and it being a _joint project._ In 1945 the Americans totally locked out the British ignoring agreements, even though the British team was the prime brains behind it.
@@johnburns4017 That's hard to believe. (not)
@@lenroddis5933 Not how Hollywood told it, is it?
@@johnburns4017 Hollywood has a penchant for putting a pro American spin on history and I believe a lot of Americans take it to be fact. There was a film, I believe, about how the Americans intercepted an Enigma machine, which, to the best of my knowledge, never happened. Given the importance of cracking the Enigma code, that strikes me as, at best, playing fast and loose with history. We hear how Kennedy bravely faced off Khrushchev in the Cuban missile crises, but seldom hear about the American missiles removed from Turkey as a quid pro quo.
Paul your videos are brilliant, the time and effort you put in anyone who works with you, I commend 👏👏 A production company somewhere needs to approach you and get you out on TV, I truly believe you’ve got the science communication skills to match anyone out there right now
IMHO, it should be the other way around... sponsors should dump TV and fund this kind of KZhead work.
TV lol
There are still people watching TV?
@@eSKAone- TV is for people who don't read. I haven't had a TV for nearly 30 years.
Excellent summary!
Oppenheimer was senior management. Arguably the best guy for the job. At the time. He wrangled cats into an efficient team.
I'd love to see Curious Droid do a similar video about Dr. Edward Teller (The so-called father of the H-bomb) and the thermonuclear-bomb.
Hans Bethe has some interesting quotes about that
Yes, but Teller was stuck until Stanislaw Ulam helped him out, although this was not known for some time afterwards, this is why it is now mostly called the Teller-Ulam model. Ulam was also part of the Manhattan Project, developed the modern method of Monte Carlo analysis, was an originator of the Orion Project, worked with von Neumann on scoping out early computers, created a mechanical analog computer for some of his early nuclear analysis and much more, including a large output of mathematical papers. He also is credited with one of my favourite quotes "Using a term like nonlinear science is like referring to the bulk of zoology as the study of non-elephant animals.” This quote illustrates the very limited way that most people see the world, most people think linearly in a non-linear world.
@@robertnicholson7733 Ulam looked down on by the likes of Teller because was just a "Mathematician".
I'm in the middle of reading "American Prometheus", the book on which the film "Oppenheimer" is based. A recommended read for anyone who is interested in why the second half of the twentieth century went as it did. If Oppenheimer had not been so worried that the Nazi's were building a bomb I suspect he would not have been so keen to be involved in helping the US build one. Einstein and Bohr were also very concerned about the military use of nuclear physics and Einstein was active in the nuclear disarmament campaign in the early 1950s.
Recommended if you enjoy books that embellish the achievements of all Americans involved while omitting those of others.
@@krashd The Americans often water-down or completely omit the role of other nations or nationalities when they discuss history, but then again so did the British back in the days of empire. The development of nuclear physics was a multinational effort involving people from the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, New Zealand, Hungary, Poland, Austria and very prominently Germany. I can't remember the story of Tube Alloys appearing in American Prometheus at all. But then again American Prometheus is a biography of Robert Oppenheimer and not a history of "The BOMB"!
So they were only worried about Jews, not the victims of the Japanese.
@@krashd I'm now much further on in the book and the role of the British in the Manhattan project is now being acknowledged. 😃
I don't recall Oppenheimer being called the inventor of the atomic bomb, but he was called the godfather of it. I think most people recognise that there were several legendary physicists involved in its invention
Picture of Bush & Roosevelt shows Truman instead. Certainly a path to the theoretical atomic bomb. Oppenheimer had the genius of the big picture and which paths to pursue because he was knowledgeable in so many fields. Like Groves he was also extremely driven. Inventor or father of the atomic is a title for a group and not an individual.
My Great Uncle Paul Woods was an engineer that worked on the bomb. He worked at Oak Ridge national laboratory as a nuclear engineer from the early 40's till the mid 90's ( He didn't retire until he was nearly 80). He also helped develop the modern salt reactors. As a kid he would take us over to the Labs and Museum. It was pretty cool.
It is harder to get into Oak Ridge than it is Area 51
So good, even with errors, that it needed uploaded twice :)
Nobody did. Asked Bard why there was no crater in the Trinity nuclear test and it answered with "it's because of the hard-baked New Mexico ground." Ridiculous.
I understood that Oppenheimer simply led the team of brilliant scientists who collectively invented the atom bomb. I think he was able to communicate with the general, who likely wouldn't understand the scientists, like someone speaking to you in a foreign language.
At the 12:40 mark is a photo of Oppenheimer with two other scientists. The middle person is Glenn Seaborg, a native of the U.P. of Michigan where he is still remembered. He won the Nobel prize in chemistry for his discovery of plutonium. He led the team that manufactured enough of it to be used by the Manhattan Project.
The person on the left is probably Ernest Lawrence
Excellent video. This provides a super background and context for the movie. You might also consider doing one on Gen. Groves, who was an organizational genius and without whom the Manhattan Project would never have succeded.
Thanks, great job! Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
4:44 Note that that is only a typical set of fission products, there's a whole range of daughter nuclei that can potentially be produced, generally around a 60%-40% split of mass.
I’m old and my understanding is that chain reaction is the key. The first understanding was in Britain when two German physicists who had escaped Nazi Germany came to that sudden understanding. Britain had given America the jet engine, short wave radar (the only kind of any use) with the invention of the cavity magnetron, but were reluctant to mention chain reaction. But then, with the war pushing britain beyond all limitations, the decision was to made to tell the Americans (who knew nothing about it) that we had made a device that changed a conventional explosion into a nuclear one but needed their resources to complete the mission. So we did. But the Americans betrayed us when they refused to tell us about later research and experimentation that created an actual bomb. So we had to start again and it took until 1952 to have our own bomb.
You overstate the British contribution ,as big as it was. Britain first if all produced the Maud report that was the first research that showed that an A bomb was doable. They had done basic research into how to cause an atomic explosion. But it wasn't like 'here is the plans, go to it chaps'. Britain didn't have the resources to undertake what was involved. And obviously British and Canadian scientists who had worked on the earlier project were involved. btw Britain also turned over penicillin as well.
Would be good to see the details better organised into a book, to know how much of this is correct and how much is sour grapes that get more bitter each time they are retold. Surprisingly poorly documented also is the Japanese nuclear project which apparently solved the centrifuge refinement method which Los Alamos did not succeed in. Even the one book I read about it in my college library has been surprisingly difficult to track down again.
@@laulaja-7186 Japan had some top physicists, I didn't know they had worked on the gas centrifuge process to get u235. You are correct there are a lot of sour grapes. The idea that building the bomb was a trivial engineering project , that everything was getting the fissionable material,was wrong. If it was well understood, the Germans would not have played around with heavy water,which was a dead end for example. That doesn't negate what Hanford and Oak Ridge did, they were taking a laboratory curiosity and trying to get to mass production, it was a huge, difficult and dangerous process,ppl literally paid for it with their lives over time. Likewise Chicago and Berkeley were doing important experimental and physical work. Keep in mind before Los Alamos was ready , work was already going on all over the place, it was at a lot of places all over the country,had to be. Los Alamos was because distributed work has its difficulties, even in this age of video conferencing and cloud computing. Being on the ground together focused the goals& also allowed for pit of the box thinking. One of Oppenheimer's brilliance was he didn't enforce silos, ppl working in theoretical were also involved in the detonation or experimental areas. One of Feynman's big wins there was he figured out a system using IBM tabulating machines arranged in a sequence to speed up calculations, in a sense created a computer using human beings and what were basically calculators. ( Later on ENIAC by late 1944 was used to verify some of the final calculations on the design of the bomb; ENIAC was one of the first electronic computers). He also did work with Oak Ridge in processing uranium to get u235.
Indeed if you ever get to see the Accent of Man by Jacob Bronowski He tells much of the story in one of the episodes. Having been one of the British scientists working in Canada on the original project he was well positioned to tell the story, though I suspect at the time of that series much was probably still top secret. He was particularly aggrieved at the way Britain was treated after the Manhattan project research was made US only post war and the returning scientists were forced to reproduce much of the work for Britains bomb. Ironically once the US realised it could not restrict its spread esp to Russia and UK advances in fast breeder reactors of the time we were pretty much allowed back in and information shared again and that cooperation has continued ever since.
@@laulaja-7186 This WIKI page is not horrible. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_contribution_to_the_Manhattan_Project Please note that one of the central characters of the British team, Mark Oliphant, was an Australian. He also worked on improving the klystron and headed the team on the cavity magnetron, although did not directly do the work on the magnetron. He flew to the USA in a Liberator and was the main advocate for the British in getting the USA to start work on the bomb. The British sent him to find out why they had not got any feedback on the MAUD reports sent earlier. The MAUD report was sitting in someone's safe (possibly not even read) and had not been shared with anyone of import in the USA. In the USA, he worked on the separation process of the isotopes, something he had been working on since the mid-thirties. I do like what Leo Szilard later wrote after the project, "if Congress knew the true history of the atomic energy project, I have no doubt but that it would create a special medal to be given to meddling foreigners for distinguished services, and that Dr Oliphant would be the first to receive one." After a meeting with Groves, he was convinced and prophetically correct when he concluded that the USA wanted to monopolize nuclear after the war. He warned the powers back in Britain, but there was little they could do at the time. After the war, he became a harsh critic of nuclear weapons.
Great video, very informative. Thanks
Many thanks for this well-researched video. Always good to put things in perspective when a major movie about a topic like this is released. For anyone who's interested in a comprehensive historiography about the 'birth' of the A-bomb I highly recommend Jim Baggott's book "The First War of Physics". Reads like a thriller.
props
Richard Rhodes two books on the fission and fusion bombs are also great reads. Very detailed.
I've followed this area if study for many years and I'm not aware of this "common" misconseption, in fact I can't remember ever hearing anyone make the claim that Oppenheimer invented the atomic bomb.
Sir Mark Oliphant was involved in many pretty amazing things, yet often gets little air time outside footnotes. Deaf in one ear, a life long vegetarian, and a genius. He was a prominent anti-nuclear weapons campaigner after the war.
I was about to comment something similar about Oliphant,his work was instrumental
@@TheBassline01 I read his biography a long time ago. he lead a really interesting life, for someone from a relatively insignificant city of Adelaide in Australia!