1950's Science and Technology | "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...