The Manhattan project

The author reports the history of the Manhattan project which was launched in 1942 with the objective of building an A bomb at any price and as soon as possible. This lead to the fabrication of two types of bomb, one using uranium in gun mode, and the other using plutonium in implosion mode. The author recalls the creation of different scientific and nuclear institutions, the development of several installations (Los Alamos, Hanford, Oak Ridge). He outlines the project secrecy (President Truman did not know anything about it when he became president), and recalls the final tests, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the last moment of the Manhattan Project after the end of the war. In conclusion, he notices that this nuclear era allowed a direct confrontation to be avoided despite the several crises which occurred during about two decades after the war