In 1939 Leo Szilard convinced his friend Albert Einstein to sign a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that Germany may be pursuing an atomic bomb. The Einstein–Szilard letter, as it came to be known, set in motion events that led to one of the most remarkable fast-track science and engineering programs in history. Earlier that year Niels Bohr had argued that building an atomic bomb “can never be done unless you turn the United States into one huge factory,” which in many respects was what happened.1 In the midst of a world war, an enormous infrastructure was created to convert cutting-edge concepts and theories into practical devices.
Nuclear weapons production did not end with World War II and, indeed, expanded greatly during the Cold War. The US went on to build approximately 70 000 nuclear warheads, more than the 55 000 built by the Soviet Union and...
