In 1938 Enrico Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work bombarding elements with slow neutrons. He failed to realize it at the time, but his bombardment of uranium likely split the uranium nucleus leading to the discovery of nuclear fission and ultimately the race to build an atom bomb. Nine months after the award ceremony, Werner Heisenberg, future architect of Hitler’s atom bomb program, traveled to the United States for a physics conference where he met with future Manhattan Project scientists Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Sam Goudsmit, who would later lead an army intelligence unit that tracked and eventually captured Heisenberg. The Greatest Scientific Gamble weaves their stories with that of Manhattan Project director Leslie Groves to create a high-stakes, big-picture narrative about the successes and setbacks of Manhattan Project scientists, Allied efforts to sabotage the German bomb program, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
