The Manhattan Project

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

"Manhattan Project" was the code name for the U.S. Army’s mission, beginning in 1942, to develop an atomic bomb at the height of the Second World War. Originally spurred by fears of National Socialist Germany’s attempts to produce atomic weapons under the direction of physicist Werner Heisenberg, work continued after Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8, 1945 as the war with Japan became increasingly brutal. On July 16, 1945, scientists exploded the world's first nuclear device in the desert of New Mexico. On August 6 and 9, 1945, two atomic bombs destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrendered on September 2. The course will also feature a tour of Fermi’s former laboratory in Rome with Ruggiero Lo Sardo, a physicist working in the same space today, and a conversation with Adam Ganz, author of the BBC radio play Nuclear Reactions and the son of one of the Farm Hall transcribers. The class itself consists of some lecturing (often involving videos of interviews with participants in the Manhattan Project); a great deal of discussion, and some in-class performance of dramatic works, and two trips to sites associated with the development and consequences of atomic studies in Rome: Enrico Fermi’s laboratory at the University of Rome and the Roman spy headquarters for the Allies in World War II, Palazzo Gaetani Lovatelli.