Title: The Manhattan Project: Beyond the Physics

Abstract:

The Manhattan Project was the United States Army’s effort to develop the first generation of nuclear weapons, which were used against Japan in August, 1945 and helped bring World War II to an end. The Project involved the coordination of hundreds of thousands of people to solve challenging problems in physics, engineering, large-scale industrial organization, production, security, personnel training, political and military strategy, and ethics that were unique for their time and whose legacies are still with us today. The methods by which various scientific and engineering hurdles were overcome are well-known within the relevant technical communities, but many other facets of the Manhattan Project remain relatively obscure. In this seminar I will explore some of the lesser-known aspects of the Project in an effort to give listeners a broader appreciation of what was a remarkably complex enterprise. 

 

 

Bio: 

Cameron Reed is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Physics at Alma College, Alma, Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Waterloo in Canada. In addition to a quantum mechanics text and three books on the Manhattan Project, he has published over 125 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals describing research in the fields of astronomy, data analysis, quantum physics, nuclear physics, the history of physics, and the physics of nuclear weapons. In 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society “For his contributions to the history of both the physics and the development of nuclear weapons in the Manhattan Project.”