Our History - Los Alamos National Laboratory

" . . . I think surely if I were asked to do a job I could do really well and that it needed doing, I’dnot refuse. ”Berkeley, 1941Reasons for projectThe first step toward a more concerted program of bomb development was the appointment,in June 1942. of J. Robert Oppenheimer from the University of California as Director of thework. By October of 1942, it had been decided that the magnitude of the difficulties involvedmade necessary the formation of a new project. Even the initial work of providing nuclearspecifications for the bomb was seriously hampered by the lack of an organization united inone locality: it was clear that without such an organization the ordnance work would beimpossible.David Hawkins, “Manhattan District History:Project Y,” Los Alamos Laboratory reportLAMS-2532 (1946), Chapter LLOS ALAMOS SCIENCE Winter/Spring 1983