‘On the Oliphant Deign, Now to Sound the Blast’: How Mark Oliphant Secretly Warned of America’s Post-war Intentions of an Atomic Monopoly

Abstract

In 1943, Mark Oliphant arrived on the Manhattan Project as a leading member of the British mission. Inside the laboratory he was a measured and skilful physicist, but outside he was a bull that charged headlong into the gates of secrecy and the unholy communion of science, politics and military. General Leslie Groves was the abrasive and practical military man in charge of the Manhattan Project and he rarely let his guard down. But in 1944, Oliphant and Ernest Lawrence challenged him on secrecy, and the usually circumspect Groves became agitated at the naivety of the self-absorbed scientists and provided an insight on America's secret post-war intentions of an atomic monopoly. Oliphant, not a man to let explosive knowledge pass him by, headed to the British Embassy inWashington to send a secure report to London that escalated all the way to the top of Britain's war time leadership. In this moment, Oliphant was sounding a horn to warn that Britain's own atomic ambitions and scientific freedoms were under imminent threat.