The Origins of the Atomic Chain Reaction

In 1932, Leo Zilard read H.G. Wells' The World Set Free in which Wells prophetically describes the liberation of atomic energy on a large scale. He realized that if you dropped a neutron into an atom it was going to wobble much like a balloon would when played with. If enough neutrons came out in the course of the splitting process to start some more atom splitting, then you'd have one and two and four and eight and 16, 32. And 80 generations you have, the Hiroshima bomb. So Zilard saw all of this kind of, but he didn't think it completely through. It's very hard to say. But he started at the wrong