In the late summer of 1941, a few months before America joined the second world war, Winston Churchill approved work on a new sort of weapon, telling his generals: "Although personally I am quite content with the existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement." Despite his laconic tone the prime minister was making history. As most Britons worried about simple questions of survival, in that desperate moment the country's atomic scientists (fortified by an infusion of brilliant refugees from Europe) led the world. And in Churchill the country had a leader who had been musing and writing about nuclear energy since the 1920s.
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