Rudolf Peierls’s “Outline of the Development of the British Tube Alloy Project”: A 1945 Account of the Earliest UK Work on Atomic Energy

Rudolf Peierls’s account, written in July 1945, offers an insider’s view of the early development of the British atomic energy project and its relation to US work, and marginal notes from Sir James Chadwick shine a light on some of the associated politics. This account, preserved in the UK National Archives, is presented here for a wider interested audience, transcribed and with some explanatory notes.