The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret scientific laboratory established by

the Manhattan Project and overseen by the University of California during World War II. It was
operated in partnership with the United States Army. Its mission was to design and build the first
atomic bombs. J. Robert Oppenheimer was its first director, serving from 1943 to December 1945,
when he was succeeded by Norris Bradbury. In order to enable scientists to freely discuss their work
while preserving security, the laboratory was located on the isolated Pajarito Plateau in northern
New Mexico. The wartime laboratory occupied buildings that had once been part of the Los Alamos
Ranch School.

The development effort initially focused on a gun-type fission weapon using plutonium called Thin
Man. In April 1944, the Los Alamos Laboratory determined that the rate of spontaneous fission in
plutonium bred in a nuclear reactor was too great due to the presence of plutonium-240 and would
cause a predetonation, a nuclear chain reaction before the core was fully assembled. Oppenheimer
then reorganized the laboratory and orchestrated an all-out and ultimately successful effort on an
alternative design proposed by John von Neumann, an implosion-type nuclear weapon, which was
called Fat Man. A variant of the gun-type design known as Little Boy was developed using uranium-
235.

Chemists at the Los Alamos Laboratory developed methods of purifying uranium and plutonium, the
latter a metal that only existed in microscopic quantities when Project Y began. Its metallurgists
found that plutonium had unexpected properties, but were nonetheless able to cast it into metal
spheres. The laboratory built the Water Boiler, an aqueous homogeneous reactor that was the third
reactor in the world to become operational. It also researched the Super, a hydrogen bomb that
would use a fission bomb to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction in deuterium and tritium.

The Fat Man design was tested in the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945. Project Y personnel formed pit
crews and assembly teams for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and participated in
the bombing as weaponeers and observers. After the war ended, the laboratory supported the
Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. A new Z Division was created to control testing,
stockpiling and bomb assembly activities, which were concentrated at Sandia Base. The Los Alamos
Laboratory became Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1947.

The discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick in 1932,[2] followed by the discovery of nuclear
fission by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1938,[3][4] and its explanation (and naming)
by physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch soon after,[5][6] opened up the possibility of a controlled
nuclear chain reaction using uranium. At the time, few scientists in the United States thought that an
atomic bomb was practical,[7] but the possibility that a German atomic bomb project would develop
atomic weapons concerned refugee scientists from Nazi Germany and other fascist countries,
leading to the drafting of the Einstein–Szilard letter to warn President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This
prompted preliminary research in the United States, beginning in late 1939.[8]

Progress was slow in the United States, but in Britain, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, two refugee
physicists from Germany at the University of Birmingham, examined the theoretical issues involved
in developing, producing and using atomic bombs. They considered what would happen to a sphere
of pure uranium-235, and found that not only could a chain reaction occur, but it might require as
little as 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of uranium-235 to unleash the energy of hundreds of tons of TNT. Their
superior, Mark Oliphant, took the Frisch–Peierls memorandum to Sir Henry Tizard, the chairman of
the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Warfare (CSSAW), who in turn passed it on to George
Paget Thomson, to whom the CSSAW had delegated responsibility for uranium research.[9] CSSAW
created the MAUD Committee to investigate.[10] In its final report in July 1941, the MAUD
Committee concluded that an atomic bomb was not only feasible, but might be produced as early as
1943.[11] In response, the British government created a nuclear weapons project known as Tube
Alloys.[12]

There was still little urgency in the United States, which unlike Britain was not yet engaged in World
War II, so Oliphant flew there in late August 1941,[13] and spoke to American scientists including his
friend Ernest Lawrence at the University of California. He not only managed to convince them that
an atomic bomb was feasible, but inspired Lawrence to convert his 37-inch (94 cm) cyclotron into a
giant mass spectrometer for isotope separation,[14] a technique Oliphant had pioneered in
1934.[15] In turn, Lawrence brought in his friend and colleague Robert Oppenheimer to double-
check the physics of the MAUD Committee report, which was discussed at a meeting at the General
Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, on 21 October 1941.[16]

In December 1941, the S-1 Section of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)
placed Arthur H. Compton in charge of overseeing the scientific research for production and design
of the bomb.[17][18] He delegated bomb design and the making of fast neutron calculations—the
key to calculations of critical mass and weapon detonation—to Gregory Breit, who was given the
title of "Co-ordinator of Rapid Rupture", and Oppenheimer as an assistant. But Breit disagreed with
other scientists working at the Metallurgical Laboratory, particularly Enrico Fermi, over the security
arrangements,[19] and resigned on 18 May 1942.[20] Compton then appointed Oppenheimer to
replace Briet.[21] John H. Manley, a physicist at the Metallurgical Laboratory, was assigned to assist
Oppenheimer by contacting and coordinating experimental physics groups scattered across the
country.[20] Oppenheimer and Robert Serber of the University of Illinois examined the problems of
neutron diffusion—how neutrons moved in a nuclear chain reaction—and hydrodynamics—how the
explosion produced by a chain reaction might behave.[22]

To review this work and the general theory of fission reactions, Oppenheimer and Fermi convened
meetings at the University of Chicago in June and at the University of California in Berkeley, in July
with theoretical physicists Hans Bethe, John Van Vleck, Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, Robert
Serber, Stan Frankel, and Eldred C. Nelson, the latter three former students of Oppenheimer, and
experimental physicists Emilio Segrè, Felix Bloch, Franco Rasetti, John Manley, and Edwin McMillan.
They tentatively confirmed that a fission bomb was theoretically possible.[23]

There were still many unknown factors. The properties of pure uranium-235 were relatively
unknown; even more so those of plutonium, a chemical element that had only recently been
discovered by Glenn Seaborg and his team in February 1941, but which was theoretically fissile. The
scientists at the Berkeley conference envisioned breeding plutonium in nuclear reactors from
uranium-238 atoms that absorbed neutrons from fissioning uranium-235 atoms. At this point no
reactor had been built, and only microscopic quantities of plutonium were available that had been
produced by cyclotrons.[24]

There were many ways of arranging the fissile material into a critical mass. The simplest was
shooting a "cylindrical plug" into a sphere of "active material" with a "tamper"—dense material that
would focus neutrons inward and keep the reacting mass together to increase its efficiency.[25]
They also explored designs involving spheroids, a primitive form of "implosion" suggested by Richard
C. Tolman, and the possibility of autocatalytic methods, which would increase the efficiency of the
bomb as it exploded.[26]

Considering the idea of the fission bomb theoretically settled—at least until more experimental data
was available—the Berkeley conference then turned in a different direction. Edward Teller pushed
for discussion of a more powerful bomb: the "Super", usually referred to today as a "hydrogen
bomb", which would use the explosive force of a detonating fission bomb to ignite a nuclear fusion
reaction between deuterium and tritium.[27] Teller proposed scheme after scheme, but Bethe
rejected each one. The fusion idea was set aside to concentrate on producing fission bombs.[28]
Teller also raised the speculative possibility that an atomic bomb might "ignite" the atmosphere
because of a hypothetical fusion reaction of nitrogen nuclei,[29] but Bethe calculated that this could
not happen,[30] and a report co-authored with Teller showed that "no self-propagating chain of
nuclear reactions is likely to be started".[31]

Oppenheimer's deft handling of the July conference impressed his colleagues; his insight and ability
to handle even the most difficult people came as a surprise even to those who knew him well.[32] In
the wake of the conference, Oppenheimer saw that while they had come to grips with the physics,
considerable work was still required on the engineering, chemistry, metallurgy and ordnance aspects
of building an atomic bomb. He became convinced that bomb design would require an environment
where people could freely discuss problems and thereby reduce wasteful duplication of effort. He
reasoned that this could best be reconciled with security by creating a central laboratory in an
isolated location.[33][34]

Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. became director of the Manhattan Project on 23 September
1942.[35] He visited Berkeley to look at Lawrence's calutrons, and met with Oppenheimer, who gave
him a report on bomb design on 8 October.[36] Groves was interested in Oppenheimer's proposal to
establish a separate bomb design laboratory. When they met again in Chicago on October 15, he
invited Oppenheimer to discuss the issue. Groves had to catch the 20th Century Limited train back to
New York, so he asked Oppenheimer to accompany him so that they could continue the discussion.
Groves, Oppenheimer, Colonel James C. Marshall, and Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Nichols all
squeezed into Nichol's single roomette compartment to discuss how a bomb laboratory could be
created and how it would function.[33][37] Groves subsequently had Oppenheimer come to
Washington, D.C., where the matter was discussed with Vannevar Bush, the director of the OSRD,
and James B. Conant, the chairman of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). On 19
October, Groves approved the establishment of a bomb laboratory.[34]

While Oppenheimer seemed the logical person to direct the new laboratory, which became known
as Project Y, he had little administrative experience; Bush, Conant, Lawrence and Harold Urey all
expressed reservations about this.[38] Moreover, unlike his other project leaders—Lawrence at the
Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, Compton at the Metallurgical Project in Chicago, and Urey at the
SAM Laboratories in New York—Oppenheimer did not have a Nobel Prize, raising concerns that he
might not have the prestige to deal with distinguished scientists. There were also security
concerns;[39] many of Oppenheimer's closest associates were active members of the Communist
Party, including his wife Kitty,[40] girlfriend Jean Tatlock,[41] brother Frank, and Frank's wife
Jackie.[42] In the end, Groves personally issued instructions to clear Oppenheimer on 20 July
1943.[39]