Moonshine, Manhattan, Maud, Monte Bello: British Scientists and Nuclear Policy

Seminar for Project on Managing the Atom

Overview

After reviewing the advances in nuclear physics made at Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, Brown examined the profound influence that British scientists had on the inception of the Manhattan project, especially through the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum and the Maud Report. During the 18 month hiatus between these two documents, the concept of an atomic bomb changed from a weapon of deterrence into an offensive war-winning weapon. After 1945, various Anglo-American agreements were vitiated, and the British secretly started work on an independent weapon project (at a time of extreme economic hardship and food rationing). Brown contrasted the roles of leading scientists on opposite sides of this debate — James Chadwick as a trusted government adviser and Patrick Blackett as an early critic of nuclear weapons.