Course Topic: The Scientists of the Manhattan Project, their Contributions to Atoms for Peace and their Lasting Legacy to Nuclear Power, Fall

Class Website TBA

Catalog Description

The discovery of the neutron in 1932 by James Chadwick, the 1932 experiment by John Cockroft and Ernest Walton that confirmed Albert Einstein's postulate from the theory of relativity about the equivalence between mass and energy (E=mc2), and the subsequent discovery of fission in 1938 revolutionized atomic and nuclear physics. During World War II, the United States established The Manhattan Project, which brought together many of the world's preeminent scientists and engineers under the leadership of J. Robert Oppenheimer with the goal of building a new and more explosive weapon based on these discoveries. The world entered the nuclear age with the explosion of the atomic bomb at Trinity, N.M. on 16 July 1945 and less than a decade later, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower provided his vision for the peaceful use of atomic energy in a speech to the United Nation's on December 8, 1953 entitled, 'Atoms for Peace'.

This course will cover the history of the scientists and engineers who participated in the Manhattan Project and their contributions to nuclear science and technology, within the context of President Eisenhower's 1953 address and nuclear power in the 21st Century. Students in the course will be expected to perform a research report on an individual scientist or engineer from the Manhattan project and his/her contributions to nuclear energy.