Manhattan Project

Though thousands of articles and books have been published on various aspects of the Manhattan Project, this book is the first comprehensive single-volume history prepared by a specialist for curious readers without a scientific background. This project, the United States Army's program to develop and deploy atomic weapons in World War II, was a pivotal event in human history. The author presents a wide-ranging survey that not only tells the story of how the project was organized and carried out, but also introduces the leading personalities involved and features simplified but accurate descriptions of the underlying science and the engineering challenges. The technical points are illustrated by reader-friendly graphics.

Bruce Cameron Reed earned his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo (Canada) in 1984. His doctoral work was in observational astronomy, a study of the distribution of stars in the Puppis direction of the Milky Way. Just before formally finishing his graduate work in 1983, he became a faculty member in the Department of Physics at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There he continued to work in observational astronomy, taking up a position as Associate Professor of Physics at Alma College in Michigan in 1992.
At Alma, Cameron began to develop an interest in the history and physics of the Manhattan Project. This grew into his primary research focus, and has resulted in some 90 publications and five books, including three with Springer: The History and Science of the Manhattan Project (now in second edition), The Physics of the Manhattan Project (fourth edition), and Manhattan Project: Story of the Century. He also developed an undergraduate-level general-education class on the Project, and has given a number of related talks and seminars. Overall, he have published eight books and over 200 papers (regular journal papers, review papers, semi-popular articles and essays, and book reviews). Cameron was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2009 in recognition of his work on the Manhattan Project; he served as Editor of the APS's Physics & Society newsletter (2009-13), and as Secretary-Treasurer of the Society's Forum on History of Physics (2013-19).
In 2010 Cameron was appointed one of six Charles A. Dana Professors at Alma, and in 2017 he was named one of several "Alumni of Honour" at Waterloo. He formally retired at the end of 2017 and is now "Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus." He then returned to the Halifax area, where he continues to teach part-time, publishes papers, and serves as an Associate Editor with the American Journal of Physics.

Introduction: An Overview of the Manhattan Project.- Background: A Brief but Friendly Tour of Nuclear Physics.- Organization: Coordinating Government and Army Support.- Design: The Los Alamos Laboratory.- Production: Uranium and Plutonium.- Testing: Project Trinity.- Deployment: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.- Legacy: The Cold War, the Nuclear Landscape, and Possible Futures.