Publication Laka-library:
The history of nuclear power (1985)
| Author | US DoE |
| Date | August 1985 |
| Classification | 6.01.0.40/01 (HISTORY / DEVELOPMENT NUCLEAR ENERGY) |
| Front | 
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From the publication:
INTRODUCTION It is the nature of man to test, to observe, and to dream. The history of nuclear energy is the story of a centuries-old dream taking form and substance as 20th century man learns to unleash and to control the vast amount of energy stored in the tiny atom. Twenty-five hundred years ago, scholars of ancient Greece developed the idea that all matter is composed of tiny, invisible particles called atoms (from the Greek word, atomos). The originators of the idea were not scientists in the contemporary sense of the word, but developed their theories through philosophical reasoning. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientists revived the atomic idea based on evidence derived from quantitative experimental data. By 1900, physicists were beginning to understand that vast quantities of energy were stored within the atom. Ernest Rutherford, a British physicist whose contribution to the theory of the basic structure of the atom gained him the title of "father of nuclear science;" wrote in 1904: If it were ever possible to control at will the rate of disintegration of the radio elements, an enormous amount of energy could be obtained from a small amount of matter. One year later, Albert Einstein developed the theory of the relationship between mass and energy, stated mathematically as E=mc2, or energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light. Almost 35 years passed, however, before Einstein's theory was proven.
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