[2] He made the first overt announcement to the scientific community on the successful splitting of uranium nuclei by neutron bombardment.
[7] Teller reports that Tuve reproduced the experiment overnight and invited the participants the next day to observe the fission events in his lab with the aid of a Geiger counter.
[8] Scientists rapidly raised concerns that such a discovery could enable Nazi Germany to develop a nuclear weapon.
It followed after the Shelter Island Conference (June 1947) which had reawakened the interest of physicists in quantum field theory.
This attracted the attention of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Richard Feynman, both also present at Washington, leading to the development of quantum electrodynamics.
[11] After the 10th conference in 1947, the conferences were discontinued due to a variety of reasons: Gamow had turned his interest into cosmology, Teller had left after the war to work at the University of Chicago and Fleming, co-organizer had stepped down from his position of chief of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at Carnegie Institution.
This announcement was heard by the physicists listed below who were attending the fifth of the Conferences on Theoretical Physics which are sponsored jointly by the Carnegie Institution of Washington and The George Washington University.Here is a list of all the conferences an topics covered:[5] Aside from Gamow, Teller, Fleming and Tuve, some notable participants include: