ABSTRACT
The first official US government action regarding atomic research was the establishment of a national advisory committee by President Franklin Roosevelt in October of 1939. Physicists Fermi and Szilard were only the most recent contributors in a cadre of international scientists that stretched back to Marie and Pierre Curie and others that were experimenting with subatomic structure and behavior throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s. Central to the Manhattan Project and subsequent development of nuclear technology was the integration of science, the academy, the military, and industry in a common effort. With the entrance of the US into World War II, the atomic project acquired a new urgency. During the 1950s through the 1970s, the entire atomic energy and weapons R&D program, insulated from public scrutiny and criticism, became a dominant model of national science technological development. The results of the Manhattan Project and the Atoms for Peace Program have failed to coincide with the prospects envisioned by Weinberg.
