Physics Colloquium 30th May delivered by Graham Farmelo Winston Churchill foresaw the nuclear age over a decade before it arrived and was the first national leader to agree to the development of nuclear weapons. His friend and advisor Frederick Lindemann, an Oxford professor of physics, exerted considerable influence on his thinking about nuclear weapons and nuclear power. In this talk, I discuss the surprisingly large role that Churchill played in nuclear history and the notion that he was the first politician to be a nuclear visionary.