The Trinity test, a name inspired by the poems of John Donne. The site chosen was a remote corner on the Alamagordo Bombing Range known as the "Jornada del Muerto," or "Journey of Death," 210 miles south of Los Alamos. Specifically, scientists would try to determine the symmetry of the implosion and the amount of energy released. Additional measurements would be taken to determine damage estimates, and equipment would record the behavior of the fireball.

In 1938 Hahn, Meitner, and Strassmann became the first to recognize that the uranium atom, when bombarded by neutrons, actually split. Hahn received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944. In 1938 Meitner had to leave Berlin because the Nazis were closing in on all people of Jewish ancestry. She soon found a congenial setting for her research at the Nobel Institute in Stockholm. Her nephew, the physicist Otto Frisch, was located at Niels Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen. Meanwhile, Hahn and Strassmann found that they had unexpectedly produced barium, a much lighter element than uranium, and they reported this news to Meitner. She and her nephew worked out the physics calculations of the phenomenon based on Bohr’s “droplet” model of the nucleus and clearly stated that nuclear fission of uranium had occurred.

Leo Szilard German: Leo Spitz until age 2; February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian-born physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear reactor with Enrico Fermi, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb.

Roosevelt within a month had organized a research committee. The United States introduced its own nuclear program under the Army Corps of Engineers in June 1942. The U.S. needed to build an atomic weapon before Germany or Japan did. The project was originally named "Development of Substitute Materials," but there was concern that the name was too suggestive of its real purpose. Since it was frequently the case the US Army Corps of Engineers offices were named for the city in which they were based, it was renamed Manhattan Engineering District, which became known as the Manhattan Project.

In September 1942, Groves was appointed to head the Manhattan Project with the rank of Temporary Brigadier General. As project leader, he was in charge of all of the project's phases, including scientific, technical and process development; construction; production; security and military intelligence of enemy activities; and planning for use of the bomb.

Under General Groves' direction, atomic research was conducted at Columbia University and the University of Chicago. The main project sites were built at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford. He personally selected J. Robert Oppenheimer as leader of the Los Alamos laboratory, disregarding the latter man's Communist associations and waiving his security clearance process.

For more about Robert Oppenheimer check out this interview:

https://soundcloud.com/publicaccessamerica/public-access-america-interview-with-j-robert-oppenheimer

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