Thin Man (nuclear bomb) Thin Man (nuclear bomb) "Thin Man" was the code name for a proposed plutonium gun-type nuclear bomb using plutonium-239 which the United States was developing during the Manhattan Project. They aborted its development when they discovered that the spontaneous fission rate of their nuclear reactor-bred plutonium was too high for use in a gun-type design, due to the high concentration of the isotope plutonium-240. In 1942, prior to the Army taking over wartime atomic research, Robert Oppenheimer held conferences in Chicago in June and Berkeley, California, in July at which various engineers and physicists discussed nuclear bomb design issues. A
Ted Taylor (physicist) Ted Taylor (physicist) Theodore Brewster Taylor (more commonly known as Ted Taylor) was an accomplished American theoretical physicist, specifically concerning nuclear energy. His higher education includes a PhD from Cornell University in theoretical physics. Although Taylor is relatively unknown to the public, his most noteworthy contributions to the field of nuclear weaponry were his small bomb developments at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. He is credited with numerous landmarks in fission nuclear weaponry development, including having developed the smallest fission weapon ever tested by the U.S., the most powerful fission weapon ever tested by the U.S., and the