Tube Alloys - MAUD Committee

MAUD Committee

In February 1940, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, while researching at the Birmingham University, considered the possibility of fast fission in uranium-235. The team approximated the critical mass of pure U-235, which was only a "pound or two", and asserted that much of this mass is sufficient enough to react and blown away by the explosion. The team directed the report to their professor Marcus Oliphant who informed Henry Tizard who was the Chairman of the Committee on the Scientific Survey of Air Defence of British Army. The March 1940 Frisch–Peierls memorandum resulted in Tizard setting up of the British MAUD Committee to investigate the feasibility of an atomic bomb. The memo prompted the MAUD Report which in turn led to the Tube Alloys project. The MAUD Committee consisted a chairman George Paget Thomson and had Marcus Oliphant, Patrick Blackett, James Chadwick, Philip Moon and John Cockcroft as its committee's members.