Manhattan Project: Science, Ethics, and Weapons

When Physicists Created the Bomb

Einstein's letter to Roosevelt (1939): German scientists are working on a uranium chain reaction — it may be possible to create an "extremely powerful bomb." Thus began the Manhattan Project — a secret U.S. program to develop atomic weapons.

$2 billion, 130,000 people, three secret cities (Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford). The world's best physicists — Oppenheimer, Fermi, Bohr, Chadwick, Teller — worked under military command. July 16, 1945 — the first test in New Mexico. August 6 and 9 — Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 200,000 killed immediately, just as many from the aftermath.

Moral Crisis: Scientists Face the Bomb

After the explosions, many of the bomb's creators were shocked. Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita: "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." He became an active advocate for nuclear weapons control — and was stripped of access to classified information in 1954 as a "security threat."

Leo Szilard tried to prevent the use of the bomb: he organized a scientists' petition to Truman. It didn't help. Joseph Rotblat (the only scientist to leave the project on ethical grounds) and others created the Pugwash movement of scientists for peace — and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

An ethical question with no definitive answer: was the use of the bomb justified? The argument "for": it prevented a ground invasion of Japan with losses of a million lives (a disputed figure). The argument "against": Japan was already seeking a path to surrender; the use was primarily a demonstration of force to the USSR.

Question for reflection: Could an individual scientist or group of scientists have stopped the Manhattan Project? How does individual ethics function in large institutional contexts?