Was the Nuclear Bomb Inevitable? With Frank Close

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. In today's episode, Adam McAuley is joined by physicist and award winning science writer Frank Klose to discuss a new history of the development of nuclear power and the extraordinary minds behind it. Frank Klose is a Fellow of the Royal Society. and Professor Emeritus of theoretical physics at Oxford University.

His new book is Destroyer of Worlds, The Deep History of the Nuclear Age, 1895-1965. Let's join Adam now with more. Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Adam Macaulay. Power is a mysterious and ethereal thing.

The energy required to fuel a major modern city, or the destructive force needed to wipe an entire island from the surface of the earth, can be found locked in the heart of mere atoms, those near invisible foundational elements of our known universe. Such power was present from the beginning, For millennia this power persisted, locked away, potent and bridled, until titans of modern science, chemists, physicists, theorists and experimenters, geniuses and, by some approximation, magicians, unlocked the history changing impact of our universe's smallest elements. This is the story of nuclear physics, and the journey of discovery that handed mankind the power to change the world, or to destroy it entirely. I'm joined today by my guest Frank Close, a fellow of the Royal Society, professor emeritus of theoretical physics at Oxford University, and fellow emeritus in physics at Exeter College, Oxford.

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