Jewish culture and many Jewish scientists had a significant role in the project. The theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer, often considered as the ""father of the atomic bomb"", was chosen to direct the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1942. The physicist Leó Szilárd, that conceived the nuclear chain reaction; Edward Teller, ""the father of the hydrogen bomb"" and Stanislaw Ulam; Eugene Wigner contributed to theory of Atomic nucleus and Elementary particle; Hans Bethe whose work included Stellar nucleosynthesis and was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory; Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Victor Weisskopf and Joseph Rotblat.
Nuclear fission more detailed description of the physics and operating principles of critical fission reactors, see nuclear reactor physics. For a description of their social, political, and environmental aspects, see nuclear power. One class of nuclear weapon, a "fission bomb" (not to be confused with the "fusion bomb"), otherwise known as an "atomic bomb" or "atom bomb", is a fission reactor designed to liberate as much energy as possible as rapidly as possible, before the released energy causes the reactor to explode (and the chain reaction to stop). Development of nuclear weapons was the motivation behind early research into nuclear fission which