this is basically not true. read the history of the discovery of nuclear fission, for example the biography of lise meitner.
but the whole notion that e=mc^2, for example, "led" to the atomic bomb takes time to debug. and 1:44 am means bedtime.
anyway, i see jks has done a good job with this.
jks said:
> You can't blame the bomb on Einstein, beyond his signing a letter
> Szilard and Teller wrote for him to get Roosevelt's attention in
> 1941 or so. Although the bomb depended in principle on the
> equivalance of mass and energy stated in e=mc2, it was recognizable
> as feasible on particle-physics rather than relativistic grounds, as
> soon as Meitner and Hahn had correctly identified the ecay of
> uranium in 1938.
to explain the observed energy of the decay products they used a nuclear drop model, the nucleus being struck by a particle of given energy and ringing and ultimately splitting into two seperate pieces under the force of positive repulsion between protons accumulated in each half of the drop. the accumulated energy resulting from this repulsion action over the time the drop halves seperated led them to a decent estimation of the high energy of decay products.
then, later one night they took a walk in the snow and returned home and meitner had the idea to check this calculation against something she had heard in a lecture by einstein many years ago when she was a student [see great bio Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics by Ruth Lewin Sime or i think rhodes history of atom bomb has this too]. she quickly examined the mass of the decay products and using e=mc^2 and the "mass defect" she ascertained the __consistency__ of the drop model with that of mass-energy equivalence.
but the whole history of nuclear models and reactions and such was i guess you could say a parallel track with e=mc^2. so although you could argue in principle that the known mass defects in nuclear decay reactions "means" there's a ton of energy around somewhere, exactly how one gets to convert mass into energy by banging heavy nuclei with a fast particle is a whole song and a dance. e=mc^2 doesnt tell you how to do that, taht is, under what conditions it might occur given a run of the mill inbound energetic particle.
think mechanism (drop model) vs. global energy bookkeeping (e=mc^2).
les schaffer