Editing David Bohm (section)

=== Manhattan Project contributions ===
During [[World War II]], the [[Manhattan Project]] mobilized much of Berkeley's physics research in the effort to produce the first [[atomic bomb]]. Though Oppenheimer had asked Bohm to work with him at [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos]] (the top-secret laboratory established in 1942 to design the atom bomb), the project's director, [[Brigadier General (United States)|Brigadier General]] [[Leslie Groves]], would not approve Bohm's security clearance after seeing evidence of his politics and his close friendship with Weinberg, who had been suspected of [[espionage]].

During the war, Bohm remained at Berkeley, where he taught physics and conducted research in [[plasma (physics)|plasma]], the [[synchrotron]] and the [[synchrocyclotron]]. He completed his [[PhD]] in 1943 by an unusual circumstance. According to biographer [[F. David Peat]],<ref>Peat 1997, p. 64</ref> "The scattering calculations (of collisions of protons and deuterons) that he had completed proved useful to the Manhattan Project and were immediately classified. Without security clearance, Bohm was denied access to his own work; not only would he be barred from defending his thesis, he was not even allowed to write his own thesis in the first place!" To satisfy the University, Oppenheimer certified that Bohm had successfully completed the research. Bohm later performed theoretical calculations for the [[Calutron]]s at the [[Y-12 National Security Complex|Y-12]] facility in [[Oak Ridge, Tennessee]]. These calculations were used for the [[Isotope separation#Electromagnetic|electromagnetic enrichment of uranium]] for the bomb dropped on [[Hiroshima]] in 1945.