James Chadwick (1891-1974) came from a humble background: his father was a cotton spinner. He was accepted in the physics department of Sir Ernest Rutherford at Manchester University in 1908 on a scholarship, and soon started publishing new findings about radioactivity. This led to a traveling scholarship to Berlin, where he made the important discovery of the continuous spectrum of β-particles. When the World War I broke out, Chadwick was interned by the Germans as an enemy alien for the next four years, but continued experiments in the prison camp. On his return to England in broken health, Rutherford invited Chadwick to join the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge where he became Rutherford’s deputy and oversaw much groundbreaking physics research over the next 15 years. Chadwick concentrated on finding evidence for the neutron, an uncharged nuclear particle whose existence was first proposed by Rutherford in 1920. Having noticed anomalous results from the Curie laboratory in Paris in 1932, Chadwick used simple bench-top apparatus to convince himself, after weeks of intense observations, that he had definite evidence for the existence of the neutron. The Nobel Prize for physics followed in 1935; that year he moved to Liverpool University to head his own department. At the outbreak of World War II, the feasibility of atomic bombs of unprecedented explosive power was already being discussed. Chadwick drafted the British MAUD committee's historic reports in the summer of 1941 which concluded that atomic bombs were indeed feasible with sufficient industrial capacity. In wartime Britain this was impossible, but in 1943 Chadwick moved to the US as head of the British scientists working on the Manhattan Project. He formed an unlikely alliance with its leader, General Leslie Groves, and became an adroit scientist-diplomat. Witnessing the first explosion of a plutonium-fueled device at the Trinity Test shattered him. Chadwick believed that dropping atomic bombs on Japanese cities was justified but the development of nuclear weapons as an unintended consequence of his discovery of the neutron caused him deep personal anguish. “Until this excellent book by Andrew Brown, [Chadwick] has remained the most shadowy of the atomic scientists who, for better or worse, gave the human species mastery over nuclear energy.” — Nigel Calder, New Scientist “Andrew Brown’s biography beautifully reveals [Chadwick’s] scientific, diplomatic and personal achievements.” — Roger H Stuewer, Physics Today “I can warmly recommend this book to all interested in the life of a remarkable scientist who played a crucial role in a formative period of the modern world.” — Hermann Bondi, Times Higher Education Supplement “This is the biography of a physicist who made one of the most important discoveries in nuclear physics, but retained to his old age the shyness of a young lad... Andrew Brown takes us through Chadwick’s life as an adventure... I found it a very good read.” — Hans Bethe, American Journal of Physics “The tale of so sterling a character, even when told as well as in this book, may be a little short on light moments, but any reader interested in the evolution of physics from an academic passion to a leading role on the world stage will find it a fascinating story and a worthy tribute to a great scientist.” — Brian Pippard, Nature “... makes absorbing reading... more than the life story of a remarkable man... unfolds the tremendous transformation that science underwent in the 20th century.” —Joseph Rotblat “… avidly researched and artfully written... This biography... blends elegantly direct scientific descriptions with often witty episodes and character summaries.” — William Lanouette, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Recounts the life and accomplishments of the nuclear physicist, who after Hiroshima promoted social responsibility within science.

J.D. Bernal, widely known as Sage since his undergraduate days at Cambridge, was a visionary scientist who was the first to see that the new subject of X-ray crystallography could be applied to the study of life. His pioneering work at Cambridge in the 1930s laid the foundation of molecular biology. He was one of the most influential and brilliant scientists of his time, inspiring many subsequent Nobel laureates. Bernal's restless energy and legendary intellect took him far beyond science. An astonishing polymath and a fervent Marxist, he was one of the central figures in a cosmopolitan intelligentsia in an age of extremes. The story of Bernal's life reflects the extraordinary political and intellectual climate in which he lived. He was witness to (and often involved in) some of the great events of the 20th century: the Easter Rebellion, schooldays in the Great War, the anti-fascist movement, the Second World War, pacifist causes and nuclear disarmament during the Cold War. He was a pioneer of Operational Research during WW2 and made the first objective analyses of the effects of bombing on cities. As this biography shows, he played a crucial role in planning the D-Day landings, arriving secretly on the Normandy beaches himself a day later. After the war, he became an international ambassador for Marxism, science, and peace, and was one of the few men familiar with Downing Street, the White House and the Kremlin. Brown's biography sets out a life richly and fully lived. Nearly every important British scientist of the mid-third of the 20th century appears in its pages, along with artists (Picasso, Hepworth), writers (Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Pablo Neruda) and statesmen (Churchill, Khrushchev, Mao, and Nehru). This compelling account draws on unprecedented access to Bernal's papers and war reports to piece together a dazzling image of Bernal: his Irish Catholic childhood, his Cambridge years, his research, his dedication to science, his intellectual brilliance, his blind, unswerving commitment to Marxism, his unorthodox Bohemian love life. But above all, the Bernal who emerges from this often critical account is a man not only of remarkable mental powers but of great warmth, kindness, and humanity.

On December 26, 1898, Marie Curie announced the discovery of radium and observed that "radioactivity seems to be an atomic property." A mere 47 years later, "Little Boy"exploded over Hiroshima. Before the Fallout is the epic story of the intervening half century, during which an exhilarating quest to unravel the secrets of the material world revealed how to destroy it, and an open, international, scientific adventure transmuted overnight into a wartime sprint for the bomb. Weaving together history, science, and biography, Diana Preston chronicles a human chain reaction of scientists and leaders whose discoveries and decisions forever changed our lives. The early decades of the 20th century brought Einstein's relativity theory, Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus, and Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, and scientists of many nations worked together to tease out the secrets of the atom. Only 12 years before Hiroshima, one leading physicist dismissed the idea of harnessing energy from atoms as "moonshine." Then, on the eve of World War II, the power of atomic fission was revealed, alliances were broken, friendships sundered, and science co-opted by world events. Preston interviewed the surviving scientists, and she offers new insight into the fateful wartime meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr, along with a fascinating conclusion examining what might have happened had any number of events occurred differently. She also provides a rare portrait of Hiroshima before the blast. As Hiroshima's 60th anniversary approaches, Before the Fallout compels us to consider the threats and moral dilemmas we face in our still dangerous world.

This volume, prepared by an acknowledged expert on the Manhattan Project, gives a concise, fast-paced account of all major aspects of the project at a level accessible to an undergraduate college or advanced high-school student familiar with some basic concepts of energy, atomic structure, and isotopes. The text describes the underlying scientific discoveries that made nuclear weapons possible, how the project was organized, the daunting challenges faced and overcome in obtaining fissile uranium and plutonium, and in designing workable bombs, the dramatic Trinity test carried out in the desert of southern New Mexico in July 1945, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the premier public resource on scientific and technological developments that impact global security. Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists, the Bulletin's iconic "Doomsday Clock" stimulates solutions for a safer world.