nebulous

There are few moments in world history where a person can confidently say a single event changed the course of humanity. The Trinity Test comes very close to that unassailable prominence.

As a Historian of Science, the Manhattan Project represents a tectonic shift. Where science, once the realm of the independently wealthy, became a truly nationalistic endavour. Governments had encouraged science for centuries, but direct investment and intervention... that was altogether new.

In the end, nearly 150,000 would play a part. The actual scientific component, at Los Alamos, was by far the smallest part - both in personnel and in dollars spent (total and per capita). In a sense, that was due to the incredible confidence of the physicists, chemists, engineers, and mathematicians who laid the grounwork years before.

Although many believe this a national achievement, it wasn't. Los Alamos couldn't have done the work we did without the international collaborations that are borne of the scientific establishment. It was Einstein and Sizlard who warned the President. It was Frish and Peierls, who proved a weapon was possible. It was Fermi and Segre who understood how nuclear fission could be channeled.

In a hodgepodge collection of log cabins from monied investors in the east and the homesteads of residents in the Espanola Valley, the Army Corps of Engineers sequestered the land. The community of Los Alamos - once planned to be no more than 500 strong - would reach 8,000 by the end of the war.