Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves was presented with an enormous task. He had to lead and coordinate a project that would take newly discovered principles and theories of nuclear interactions and translate them into manufactured military weapons. The work had to be done under emer­gency conditions and in total secrecy, using scientists recently imported from enemy-held territory. He had multiple tasks to be done first, before anything else was done. He had to build three city-sized laboratories: Site W, in the desert in Washington State at Hanford on the Columbia River, would be built to produce usable quantities of an element that had never before existed, named plutonium. Site X, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, would be built to separate a rare isotope from tons of uranium ore, one atom at a time. Site Y, built in the high desert in New Mexico at Los Alamos, would be the intersection point, where these two exotic materials would be fash­ioned into a new type of extremely powerful bomb.

Groves needed experts in fields that were not even invented yet. He needed people, materials, and money at a time when all three were in short supply, but most immediately he needed help. He saw a requirement for a top theoretical scientist in a management position to keep the con­tinued nuclear research and development running fast and efficiently. His Manhattan Project needed a scientific director, and he chose Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67), a physicist from the University of California, Berkeley.

Oppenheimer and Groves were complete opposites. Groves was large and overweight and fond of eating a certain type of candy called turtles. He was a career military man, trained in the United States as an engineer, with experience in large construction projects. His political views were conservative, and his manner could be brusque and direct. Oppenheimer was thin and underfed, and eating was not his favorite activity. He was a career academic, trained at the University of Gottingen, and his experi­ence was theoretical physics. His political views were socialist with com­munist leanings, and his manner could be arrogant and sarcastic. They were a perfect match. Both became driven by the project. The two became good friends. When the war closed, they would share the credit for hav­ing led a magnificent job and the blame for having unleashed a dangerous product.