Professor Gareth Williams on why Christopher Nolan's new blockbuster film Oppenheimer perpetuates a myth that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945 were all-American inventions. Here he explains the British contribution to the story.
How an Australian drew Oppenheimer into the race to build the A-bomb brisbanetimes.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from brisbanetimes.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
There are still no clear-cut answers to these questions, decades after the end of the war. There probably never will be. The issues that they raise in the nuclear debate remain too polarizing. The one certainty is that the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union deeply shaded politics in those decades. There is no debate, however, that the A bomb spurred many technical innovations in energy use that would not have happened without the race to develop the bomb.