Up on the balcony overlooking the doubles squash court where the brick pile stood was a short man with black hair that had receded evenly to the top of his head. He looked like a high school math teacher, but he was a world renown physicist. Winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize for physics, the 41-year-old Italian Enrico Fermi had created this incredible experiment in brick together with Leo Szilard a Hungarian physicist. Szilard was a leading figure in launching the Manhattan Project, America's quest for the atomic bomb. The brick pile was a key to the bomb -- an attempt to create a nuclear reactor.
The Fermi-Szilard brick pile known as "the egg-boiling experiment" was based on a theory that a nuclear chain reaction could be created and controlled. While Szilard felt unsure about the experiment's success, he doubted some colleagues who feared the chain reaction might result in an explosion. Yet, the night before the experiment Szilard crossed the campus to Culver Hall to seek out his friend physiological psychologist Henrich Kluver. Szilard had eaten dinner, but he asked Kluver to join him for a second dinner, "just in case." Kluver asked "Just in case of what?"
Over dinner, Szilard told Kluver about the next day's experiment. Szilard believed the experiment might fail, but if it worked "too well" an explosion might result. Kluver asked Szilard if he doubted his colleagues conclusions. "Not at all," Szilard answered. "But even the greatest theoretical physicists cannot be absolutely certain. So I felt that a second dinner was in order."
On the morning of December 2, inquisitive Manhattan Project members lined the squash court's balcony. Down on the floor, the scientists put on their graphite-stained lab coats and took their positions. Walter Zinn stood by his invention, the ZIP rod. This device would stop the chain reaction if the neutron intensity became to great. George Weil took up position at the last of the control rods. All
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