15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
[[File:Los_Alamos_Main_Gate_(2).jpg|left|thumbnail|300px350px|Los Alamos Project Main Gate]]
__NOTOC__
Before World War II, Los Alamos, New Mexico was a Boys Ranch School and little else. Even though it was only 33 miles from Santa Fe (New Mexico's capital) it was extremely isolated. Nobody was going to accidentally go to Santa Fe. This made a perfect location for one of the key laboratories that built the atomic bomb during World War II.
====Oppenheimer recruits scientists to Los Alamos====
[[File:Robert_Oppenheimer_1946.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|Robert Oppenheimer 1946]]
Oppenheimer had a chance to display his persuasive abilities early when he had to convince scientists, many of them already deeply involved in war-related research in university laboratories, to join his new organization. Complicating his task were initial plans to operate Los Alamos as a military laboratory. Oppenheimer accepted Groves's rationale for this arrangement but feared that the military chain of command was ill-suited to scientific decision making and soon found that scientists objected to working as commissioned officers.
