By Scott Bennett

December 2, 1942 — almost one full year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the scientific community in the US was in a state of high anxiety. Physicists were sure that Hitler’s war machine, which had a two-year head start, was well on its way to developing a nuclear weapon. The race was on to create the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. If American scientists couldn’t make this happen, it would be impossible to construct a nuclear weapon of their own, and the war could be lost.

Working in secret in an unused squash court underneath the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field stands, scientists, students and laborers worked day and night piling 50- and 100-pound graphite bricks into a massive 771,000-pound egg-shaped reactor core. On the snowy afternoon of December 2, a few dozen people looked on nervously as cadmium rods were removed and the world’s first nuclear reactor was activated. Without any cooling or shielding system, it was possible that the world’s first fission reaction could also create the world’s first nuclear meltdown, right in the middle of the campus.

At 3:25 PM, the clicking of the Geiger counter confirmed that the experiment was a success, producing about enough energy to power a single light bulb. There were no cheers, toasts or hearty slaps on the back, although the researchers did pass around a bottle of chianti for a few celebratory sips. Graduate student Leona Woods described the mood in the room, saying, “There was a greater drama in the silence than if the words had been spoken.”

Later recognized as perhaps the greatest scientific experiment of the 20th century, team leader Enrico........

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