The Impossible Bomb: The Hidden History of British Scientists and the Race to Create an Atomic Weapon...

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Gareth Williams

The Impossible Bomb

The Hidden History of British Scientists and the Race to Create an Atomic Weapon

Gareth Williams

$51.95

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Yale University Press
22 July 2025

British & Irish history; Military history; Nuclear weapons; History of science; Atomic & molecular physics

The remarkable story of the forgotten British scientists who enabled the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb

Atomic weaponry is widely understood as a story of American scientific achievement—but scientists working in Britain played a vital role in its development. Including Nobel Prize winners and Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, these scientists have long since been forgotten. But without their expertise, Robert Oppenheimer's research at Los Alamos would never have succeeded.

Gareth Williams unearths the true story of the top-secret British atomic programme, codenamed ""Tube Alloys,"" established in 1940. These pioneering scientists struggled to convince sceptics in Britain and the USA that an atomic ""super-bomb"" capable of destroying entire cities was feasible, and could be built in time to influence the outcome of the Second World War. Williams shows how the British atomic programme, despite the often disruptive involvement of political leaders such as Winston Churchill, was vital to the success of the Manhattan Project.

The Impossible Bomb sheds new light on how humanity's deadliest weapons came to exist—and the massive destruction they wrought.

By: Gareth Williams
Imprint: Yale University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780300284881
ISBN 10: 0300284888
Pages: 480
Publication Date: 22 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Gareth Williams is emeritus professor and former dean of medicine at the University of Bristol. He is the author of over 200 medical papers and 20 books, including Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox and Unravelling the Double Helix.

Reviews for The Impossible Bomb: The Hidden History of British Scientists and the Race to Create an Atomic Weapon

“Sparkles with originality.”—Richard Moore, author of Nuclear Illusion, Nuclear Reality “Winston Churchill’s wartime military assistant Ian Jacob quipped to him that the Allies won the war “because our German scientists were better than their German scientists”. Three of these scientific refugees from 1930s Nazi Germany who became British citizens played key roles in the pivotal British contribution to creating the apparently all-American atomic bomb—the subject of Gareth Williams’s history, which reveals and brings to life this crucial but unfamiliar drama.”—Andrew Robinson, author of Einstein on the Run “A fast-paced yet rigorous account of one of the most important – and deadly – projects in scientific history.”—Richard Toye, author of Age of Hope “Williams provides a comprehensive, rich and accessible account of the crucial, yet often overlooked role that British scientists played in the development of the atomic bomb. A must read for everyone interested in this important aspect of the history of science, technology and humanity.”—Christoph Laucht, author of Elemental Germans