A short paper relating to the Division of Scientists during the Manhatten Project Era. college
topic: History of Science in the 20th Century
While the world was dividing just before the Second World War, the international physicists were trying to stay together. They were torn by pressures from Gorvernments who wanted power.
formats: Adobe PDF (25.5kB), PostScript (46.3kB), TeX (1.8kB) 1995-11-08 quality 3

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\rightline {Zak Smith}
\rightline {November 8, 1995}
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While the world was dividing just before the Second World War,
the international physicists were trying to stay together.  They
were torn by pressures from Gorvernments who wanted power.

As many physicists were forced to leave their positions and homes
in the years preceding WWII, they sought havens offered by
others like Rutherford and Bohr.  Eventually, many of these
ended up in America, working on this Manhatten Project.  

The events that occured while the physicists in Germany and
elsewhere were trying to avoid the creation of a bomb would
make a play with lots of irony, but unfortunately it actually
happened.  Neither side wanted a bomb.  The physicists left in
Germany who were supposedly working on a bomb were actually
making sure no work was being done on one there.  

In the meantime, the prospect of a tyrant like Hitlet having the
bomb was such a scary thought that the Physicists in America
were given lots of incentive to beat him to it; they were convinced
the scientists left in Germany were working their hardest to
produce a bomb, even though they had once been in close 
contact with them.

This distrust had further bad effects when the German physicists
were trying to inform the Bohr, and other ``free'' physicists 
that they actually had {\it no\ } intention of producing a bomb!

The position of the physicists who made the bomb should not
be critisized.  Given that they thought that eventually Hitler
would get the bomb, the only moral choice they had was
to make one first, so they could preserve that which they valued.



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[Zak Smith] [zak@computer.org] [/~zak/documents/college/hsci-divide/tex]
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