Life-size statues of Oppenheimer and Groves in downtown Los Alamos. Photo by Chris Judson
By CHRIS JUDSON
Presented by the Los Alamos Historical Society and Team Oppie
In 1939, three physicists— Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller—went to famed scientist Albert Einstein to ask his help. They were very concerned about the likelihood that the Nazis were working on an atomic weapon. They had written a letter to alert the president and urge him to get the United States started on similar research. They felt that Einstein’s signature would carry the necessary weight to get Roosevelt’s attention.
The letter was the first of many steps that eventually led to the establishment of the top secret Manhattan Project under the US Army Corps of Engineers in August, 1942. Its purpose was to encourage research, design, the building, and possibly the delivery of an atomic weapon before Germany succeeded.
As an army project, it was assigned to then Col. Leslie Groves (later General Groves), who had just overseen the building the Pentagon. The Secretary of War Henry Stimson took direct control and advised President Roosevelt and then President Truman. Groves became the direct supervisor. When it was decided that there should be a secret laboratory for the design and engineering of the weapon, Groves chose J. Robert Oppenheimer as its scientific director. This was a surprising choice since Oppenheimer had no real experience in administering a laboratory. He also had a questionable security background, but Groves backed his choice all through, and after, the Manhattan Project. One mid-November day in 1942, Groves, Oppenheimer, and several others met in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, to choose a site for the laboratory after considering five possible places. They decided on the Los Alamos Ranch School on the Pajarito Plateau.
Background of Characters
Albert Einstein (played by Tom Conti)
For decades, the name “Einstein” has been connected with genius and science. Albert Einstein is best known for his work with relativity and quantum mechanics and his famous equation e=mc2, but he was not involved in the Manhattan Project.
Einstein was born in Germany in 1879, received his PhD from the University of Zurich in 1905, and by 1921 had received his Nobel Prize for Physics. During World War I he supported pacifism, and in 1933 moved to the US to get away from Nazi repression. In 1939 three physicists, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner, asked him to sign a letter to President Roosevelt alerting him to the likelihood of a German nuclear weapons program and urging the US to begin work on similar research. Einstein agreed since he opposed the Nazis gaining the lead.
Einstein became a naturalized American citizen that year, but the US Army Intelligence Office denied him a security clearance. He supported the Allies but not the use of atomic weapons, and he was not a part of the Manhattan Project. Einstein was never in Los Alamos during the project.
