Day 37: The Atomic Statue

     The year is 1942.  The United States is firmly entrenched in World War II, a two-front war that between the might of the Germans and the tenacity of the Japanese seems to be quickly slipping out of the grasp of the Allies.  We needed an edge, and we needed it badly.  Then, science came to the rescue.  It had been theorized for many years that splitting the atom could be harnessed to form a large explosion, nuclear fission having been discovered in 1938 by three German physicists.  In 1939, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Albert Einstein drafted a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt warning of the potential that this new technology could be harnessed to produce "extremely powerful bombs of a new type".  Therefore, they urged the government to pursue research into nuclear chain reactions and their potential weaponization.  So FDR formed a committee to investigate this possibility.

     Thus enters Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.  Oppenheimer is known as the "father of the atomic bomb", and for good reason. He was brought into the fold in May of 1942, and made several vital contributions that allowed the United States to build the bomb.  Finally, on December 2, 1942, there was a breakthrough.  A team led by Enrico Fermi, that was working underneath the stands at the old football stadium of the University of Chicago, used the reactor Chicago Pile-1 to successfully set off the world's first self-sustaining controlled nuclear reaction.  We would of course, go on to build the bomb, beat the Germans, and then win the war, thus ensuring the safety of freedom and democracy on this earth.

     But our story doesn't end here.  In 1966, the National Register of Historic Places was created to notate and preserve places of historical significance in this country.  The site of the first self-sustaining controlled nuclear reaction was one of the first four sites included in the register.  The next year, sculptor Henry Moore was commissioned to erect a sculpture paying tribute to the accomplishment.  The sculpture itself is 14 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter, and is often recognized as either a human skull or a mushroom cloud, depending on the observer.  It stands as just one of many tributes to a group of people who never gave up, had tenacity, and ended up saving the world because of it.