The MAUD Committee

After the initial discovery of fission by European scientists, the key theoretical work on building the bomb was worked out in England in 1940 and 1941 by two refugee German physicists, Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch. Their work led to a secret report by a British government committee code-named the MAUD Committee. The 1941 report stated that a bomb could be constructed from twenty-five pounds of uranium that "would be equivalent as regards destructive effect to 1,800 tons of T.N.T." But making the bomb would be a very large and expensive operation. The report concluded that despite the cost of the enormous engineering and manufacturing operation needed to produce the bomb, "the destructive effect both material and moral, is so great that every effort should be made to produce bombs of this kind."

The report explains in very clear terms what fission...