1945 - Energy

Energy

The atomic bomb raises the possibility of a new energy source (as well as of a nuclear holocaust that would end civilization). The nuclear devices have been developed in the Manhattan Project crash program, headed by Albany, N.Y.-born Gen. Leslie Groves, 48, with a scientific force headed by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, now 41. A British atomic research group led by physicist Rudolf Peierls, now 38, joined the Manhattan Project in 1943. Chinese-born physicist Chien-shiung Wu, 33, at Columbia worked out a method last year for producing large quantities of fissionable uranium and perfected an improved Geiger counter. La Grange, Ill.-born physicist Leona Libby (née Marshall), 26, helped construct the first thermal column. She will design and build the first nuclear reactor and invent an advanced analytical machine—the rotating neutron spectrometer. Oregon-born physicist Raemer E. Schreiber, 35, has helped develop "Fat Man," the bomb America dropped on Nagasaki, and has been on the team sent to Tinian Island in the Pacific to assemble the nuclear weapons.

U.S. gasoline and fuel oil rationing ends August 19.