Science—a fragile, nascent political system of limited but increasing franchise—would have to wait until the war was won. Or so it seemed. But a few among the men and women gathered at Los Alamos—certainly Robert Oppenheimer—sniffed a paradox. They proposed in fact to win the war with an application of their science. They dreamed further that by that same application they might forestall the next war, might even end war as a means of settling differences between nations.
