Definition of manhattan project in English English dictionary
the secret US scientific plan, which was started in 1942, to develop an atom bomb Los Alamos. (1942-45) U.S. government research project that produced the first atomic bomb. In 1939 U.S. scientists urged Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish a program to study the potential military use of fission, and $6,000 was appropriated. By 1942 the project was code-named Manhattan, after the site of Columbia University, where much of the early research was done. Research also was carried out at the University of California and the University of Chicago. In 1943 a laboratory to construct the bomb was established at Los Alamos, N.M., and staffed by scientists headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Production also was carried out at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash. The first bomb was exploded in a test at Alamogordo air base in southern New Mexico. By its end the project had cost some $2 billion and had involved 125,000 people
code name for the secret United States project set up in 1942 to develop atomic bombs for use in World War II a former United States executive agency that was responsible for developing atomic bombs during World War II