Advisory Committee on Uranium

Roosevelt that weapons could be created using a nuclear chain reaction in uranium and that it was very hkely that Germany had started working on a uranium bomb. This letter led to the formation of the Advisory Committee on Uranium. The committee did litde, however, until Rudolf Peierls and Frisch, working in England, made detailed calculations about the feasibility of nuclear weapons and proposed some possible approaches to making an atomic bomb. 

The scientific authority behind the meeting was nevertheless AE s, as FDR wrote AE on OcL 19, 1939 I found this data of such import that I have convened a board. .. to thoroughly investigate the possibilities of your suggestion. Nathan and Nor-den (1960), p. 297. Some have questioned the effect of the Einstein/Szilard/Sachs contact. Its effect was to convince FDR to appoint the Advisory Committee on Uranium. The emigres were hardly to blame for the inadequacies of that committee. 

President Roosevelt responded to the call for government support of uranium research quickly but cautiously. He appointed Lyman J. Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards, head of the Advisory Committee on Uranium, which met for the first time on October 21, 1939. The committee, including both civilian and military representation, was to coordinate its activities with Sachs and look into the current state of research on uranium to recommend an appropriate role for the federal government. In early 1940 the Uraniimi Committee recommended that the government fund limited research on isotope separation as well as Fermi s and Stilard s work on chain reactions at Columbia. 

Alexander Sachs discusses Einstein s letter with President Roosevelt. Roosevelt decides to act and appoints Lyman J. Briggs head of the Advisory Committee on Uranium. 

Einstein writes a letter to US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, calling the presidents attention to the German fission program and urging the creation of a US government-sponsored program to pursue fission and develop an atomic bomb Roosevelt responds by establishing the Advisory Committee on Uranium. 

The next morning Roosevelt met with Sachs and US Army general Edwin Pa Wilson, a chief military aide to the president. Roosevelt said he was convinced that if Hitler obtained an atomic bomb, the Nazi dictator would not hesitate to use it on European cities. Turning to Wilson, Roosevelt said, Pa, this requires action. Ten days later Wilson convened the first meeting of the Advisory Committee on Uranium. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt US president Roosevelt took office in 1933 and served until his death in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II. Roosevelt created the Advisory Committee on Uranium, an organization that would eventually become the Manhattan Project. Roosevelt had hoped the atomic bomb would make conventional warfare obsolete and help America spread democrafirst atomic bomb was deployed. 

Bassett, S.H., Frankel, A., Cedars, N., et al., 1948. The excretion of hexavalent uranium following intravenous administration. II. Studies on human subjects. Univ. of Rochester U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Report Report UR-37 (Advisory Committee on human radiation experiments No. CON-030795-A-l), 54. University of Rochester, Rochester. 

A key collection of records on the subject of radiation protection and safety is maintained by the Division of Radiological Health of the United States Public Health Service in its library in Rockville, Maryland. The files are particularly rich in documenting the activities of the National Advisory Committee on Radiation and the Federal Radiation Council as well as the involvement of the Public Health Service in the fallout controversy and the efforts to protect uranium miners. The Service collected its materials in the preparation of a 1979 report, "Effects of Nuclear Weapons Testing on Health." They are available on microfilm for public examination. 

By the time Bush received the second National Academy of Sciences report, he had assumed the position of director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Established by an executive order on June 28, 1941—sbc days after German troops invaded the Soviet Union—the Office of Scientific Research and Development strengthened the scientific presence in the federal govenunent. Bush, who had lobbied hard for the new setup, now reported directly to the President and could invoke the prestige of the White House in his dealings with other federal agencies. The National Defense Research Committee, now headed by James B. Co-nant, president of Harvard University, became an advisory body responsible for making research and development recommendations to the Office of Scientific Research and Development. The Uranium Committee became the Office of Scientific Research and Development Section on Uranium and was codenamed S-1 (Section One of the Office of Scientific Research and Development). 

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