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Publication Laka-library:
The History of Los Alamos and the Bomb (1990)

Author	Robert Seidel
Date	1990
Classification	3.01.8.51/01 (UNITED STATES - SITES - LOS ALAMOS)
Front

The pre-war years

In 1993, Los Alamos National Laboratory celebrated its 50th anniversary. How did 
the Laboratory come to be located in Los Alamos? Who were the movers and shakers 
who created it? And how did a small group of people transplanted to a tiny, isolated 
community in the mountains of Northern New Mexico conceive of a weapon that 
would forever change momentous events of the Laboratory's inception.

The Laboratory was founded in the midst of World War II - a war that presented a 
scientific challenge to the United States - to provide weapons based on advanced 
concepts and new discoveries that would help defeat the enemy.
In the years between World War I and World War II, the United States had risen 
to pre-eminence in nuclear physics. This was due in part to the immigration of 
scientists from Europe and in part to the native ingenuity of American physicists. 
These scientists joined forces to invent the tools of nuclear physics - cyclotrons and 
other particle accelerators - and many new substances using these tools, including 
biomedically useful radioisotopes like carbon-14.
The technological contributions these scientists made to the war effort included 
nuclear weapons, radar and rockets. Nuclear physics was particularly important 
in the development of the atomic bomb.

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