Stuart Russell

Well, so up to the development was mostly theoretical.

So it was people using sort of primitive kinds of particle acceleration and doing experiments at the level of single particles or collections of particles.

They weren't.

yet thinking about how to actually make a bomb or anything like that.

But they knew the energy was there, and they figured if they understood it better, it might be possible.

But the physics establishment, their view, and I think because they did not want it to be true, their view was that it could not be true, that this could not provide a way to make a superweapon.

And, you know, there was this famous speech given by Rutherford, who was the sort of leader of nuclear physics.

And it was on September 11th, 1933.

And he said, you know, anyone who talks about the possibility of obtaining energy from transformation of atoms is talking complete moonshine.

And the next morning Leo Szilard read about that speech and then invented the nuclear chain reaction.

And so as soon as he invented, as soon as he had that idea that you could make a chain reaction with neutrons, because neutrons were not repelled by the nucleus, so they could enter the nucleus and then continue the reaction.

As soon as he has that idea, he instantly realized that the world was in deep doo-doo.

Because this is 1933, right?

Hitler had recently come to power in Germany.

Szilard was in London and eventually became a refugee and came to the U.S.,

And in the process of having the idea about the chain reaction, he figured out basically how to make a bomb and also how to make a reactor.

And he patented the reactor in 1934, but because of the situation, the great power conflict situation that he could see happening, he kept that a secret.

And so between then and the beginning of World War II, people were working, including the Germans, on war.

how to actually create neutron sources, right, what specific fission reactions would produce neutrons of the right energy to continue the reaction.

And that was demonstrated in Germany, I think, in 1938, if I remember correctly.