Aspiring Astrophysicist

ThankYouforHelp
Wed, 30 Sep 2015 20:29:07 +0000

I wasn’t questioning the role played by Columbia University in the Manhattan Project. But as I said, that was the first successful Uranium atom split done in the United States - not in the world. The first uranium splitting experiments done anywhere were by Enrico Fermi in Rome in the mid-1930s. Later, in Berlin in late 1938. Then in Copenhagen a couple of weeks later. Then at Columbia in early 1939. Then at Johns Hopkins and at Berkeley a few days later.

What they did at Columbia was to replicate the experiments that they had just heard about from Berlin - everyone who was anyone win Physics was talking about what had just happened in Berlin. Here’s a 1939 newspaper story about it.

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/splitting-the-atom/

There were several other places at other Universities in the US and around the world that were just as important to the Manhattan Project as Pupin Hall. The University of Chicago has at least two registered historic landmarks of the same type - the site of the world’s first working nuclear reactor and the site where plutonium was first isolated.

Again, not trying to criticize Columbia. Columbia, Chicago, Berkeley and Princeton were probably the most significant physics departments during that period. I just think it is silly to keep posting about Columbia site as though it was the ONE place where it all happened.