American Decades
"Should America Build the H Bomb?"
Essay
By: Harold C. Urey
Date: 1950
Source: Urey, Harold C. "Should America Build the H Bomb?" In The H Bomb. New York: Didier, 1950, 130–133.
About the Author: Harold Clayton Urey (1893–1981) was born in Walkerton, Indiana, and received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1923. His discovery of deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen, won him the 1934 Nobel Prize in chemistry. He died in La Jolla, California.
Introduction
The origins of the twentieth-century arms race lay in World War II (1939–1945), when both Germany and the United States worked to develop an atomic bomb. The United States and its allies defeated Germany before Adolf Hitler succeeded in building such a weapon. In July 1945 the United States successfully tested a uranium bomb. Then, in August, it ended the war with Japan by dropping a uranium bomb...
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1950's Science and Technology Primary Sources
- The H Bomb
- "Should America Build the H Bomb?"
- "Streptomycin: Background, Isolation, Properties, and Utilization"
- "The Biologic Synthesis of Deoxyribonucleic Acid"
- "A Production of Amino Acids Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions"
- "The Atom for Progress and Peace"
- Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
- Conquest of the Moon
- "Polio Vaccine Evaluation Results"
- "Transistor Technology Evokes New Physics"
- The Computer and the Brain
- The Astronomical Universe
- The Control of Fertility
- "Mutable Loci in Maize"
- Copyright Page
- Acknowledgments
