Day of Trinity by Lansing Lamont

(An absence of a picture of the book cover meant I just found a picture of Trinity exploding).


This book looks at the story behind the creation and detonation of the first atomic bomb in Los Alamos. Beginning with the scientific realisation by scientists such as Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi. The project was first set up as the result of a perceived threat of the same discovery by Nazi Germany in the early 1940s. Nuclear physicists and engineers from all over the USA and the UK were drawn out of jobs and drawn to the desert of Los Alamos.

The book details firstly the various elements that were designated as required to build an atomic bomb and the desert became a sort of think tank filled with some of the world's best scientists created to stave off the threat of Germany. Lamont details the different departments that were aimed at finding and creating the various parts of the bomb. The whole project was practiced under a shroud of secrecy and Lamont also detailed how parts of the research were passed on to Russia by another physicist, Fuchs.

Parts of the book leading up to the explosion of Trinity read like a thriller, I could feel myself hanging on to the edge of the seat even though I obviously already knew the result. The latter part of the book also provided interesting details. Firstly of Oppenheimer's realisation of the destruction further work could do and his refusal to work on the hydrogen bomb (the H-bomb) and how Oppenheimer, a quiet man interested in poetry and with a great gift for nuclear physics would feel about being called the father of the atomic bomb.

It also contained useful information about the aftermath, mainly the continuing battles between different countries to hold the most powerful bomb in a sort of nuclear standoff. More information about the devastation it wreaked all over Japan with injuries that still exist today would have been useful.

The book surely renewed my interests in science and also in the capability of humans to separate themselves from the destruction they are creating. The book is an interesting, thrilling and informative read.