{ Academic Life: sidelight }
The first sustained nuclear reaction
By 1940, the Roosevelt administration was pouring massive funds into secret atomic research at Chicago and elsewhere. Enrico Fermi and other outstanding scientists were brought to the University in 1941, when the government decided to concentrate work on atomic chain reactions at Chicago.
Throughout the fall of 1942, preparations were made for the big experiment—800,000 pounds of graphite and 22,000 pieces of uranium oxide were stacked into a great pile by graduate students and laborers working 90-hour weeks. Detecting equipment indicated the growth of greater and greater neutron intensity.
On December 2, 1942, under the west stands of Stagg Field, the moment occurred. "The reaction is self-sustaining," Fermi said. And if something had gone wrong? Fermi had plenty of precautions: the experiment was very controlled, there were emergency control rods, and there were graduate sudents standing by on the pile with buckets of a cadium salt solution. The extra precautions, of course, proved unnecessary.
