In this letter, they warned the American President that Hitler is working on nuclear weapons. And that he may be successful in making this extremely powerful bomb. That’s why America should be prepared. As soon as he read this letter, the American President set up an advisory committee on uranium. Taking immediately action. A team of scientists and military officials was formed.
Their job was to research the potential of uranium. Can uranium be made into a weapon? After the findings of this committee, the American government started funding Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard. For researching how nuclear chain reactions work. And how to separate the isotopes of uranium.
The thing is that the naturally found uranium on earth is the uranium-238 isotope. Less than 1% of the uranium is actually a U-235 isotope. And only this U-235 isotope, could be used to make the bomb. The first challenge for these scientists was to find a way to make uranium-235 using the uranium-238. But the scientists working on this project were told not to tell Albert Einstein anything. Because the American government was afraid that Albert Einstein’s ideology was very left-wing. It could have been a potential security risk.
