Scientists described their atomic bomb efforts as “the devil’s work”

RIA Novosti (110 sec.)

The world’s first atomic device was detonated on July 16, 1945 on a testing range in Alamogordo (New Mexico, United States).

But German scientist Otto Hahn obtained incontestable proof that uranium could split into lighter elements as early as 1938. The scientific community hailed the discovery as “the beginning of a new era in humankind’s history.”

As the war began, many leading figures in science and culture left Nazi Germany. Among them was Albert Einstein, who, by putting together Hahn’s discovery and a ban on uranium exports from Czechoslovakia, guessed right and wrote a letter to U.S. President Roosevelt, proposing the immediate development of an atomic bomb.

In order to implement the project, code-named Manhattan, a National Laboratory was set up in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Outstanding physicists of the 20th century, including ten Nobel Prize winners, were invited to participate. At 5:30 a.m., an atomic device was exploded on a testing range 60 miles from Alamogordo, in the southwestern United States.

The project leader, Robert Oppenheimer, said: “We did the devil’s work.” 

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