MAUD Committee

The MAUD Committee was a British group established in April 1940 to investigate the feasibility of creating a uranium bomb. Expanding on the concept of critical mass, a paper by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls estimated that a superweapon could be constructed using uranium-235. The committee's report in July 1941 confirmed the practicability of a uranium bomb and recommended continued collaboration with the Americans. Due to wartime economic pressures, Britain's primary effort shifted to supporting the American Manhattan Project, with many British scientists contributing to the U.S. program. After the war, Britain formally decided to develop its own atomic bomb, with William Penney leading the effort to create a plutonium-based weapon. The first British atomic bomb test, codenamed Hurricane, occurred in 1952.1