How did physics change as a result of the making and use of the atomic bomb?
Introduction In the twentieth century, almost every aspect of science changed: it spread from insular universities to government, industry, and the military. New disciplines emerged and the boundaries between old ones blurred. But perhaps the greatest change was science’s growth in scale, scope, and cost, as it was transformed from an activity in which small groups or individuals conducted experiments into “Big Science” — a large-scale enterprise that is carried out by multidisciplinary and multinational groups of researchers, costs enormous sums, demands massive institutions of its own, and often represents a substantial fraction of national budgets. These changes have often been ascribed to the Manhattan Project, the allies’ research during World War II that resulted in the construction and deployment of the atomic bomb. In this write-up I will discuss the effect that the Manhattan Project had on physics and the development of Big Science. Pre-World War II Prior to the atomic bomb, p
