much less urgency in the United States. Oliphant was one of the people who pushed the American program into motion. On 5 August 1941, Oliphant flew to the United States in a B-24 Liberator bomber, ostensibly to discuss the radar-development program, but was assigned to find out why the United States was ignoring the findings of the MAUD Committee. He later recalled: "the minutes and reports had been sent to Lyman Briggs, who was the Director of the Uranium Committee, and we were puzzled to receive virtually no comment. I called on Briggs in Washington [DC], only to find out that this inarticulate and unimpressive man had put the reports in his safe and had not shown them to members of his committee. I was amazed and distressed." Oliphant then met with the Uranium Committee at its meeting in New York on 26 August 1941. Samuel K. Allison, a new member of the committee, was an experimental physicist and a protégé of Arthur Compton at the University of Chicago. He recalled that Oliphant "came to a meeting and said 'bomb' in no uncertain terms. He told us we must concentrate every effort on the bomb, and said we had no right to work on power plants or anything but the bomb. The bomb would cost 25 million dollars, he said, and Britain did not have the money or the manpower, so it was up to us." Allison was surprised that Briggs had kept the committee in the dark. Oliphant then travelled to Berkeley, where he met his friend Lawrence on 23 September, giving him a copy of the Frisch–Peierls memorandum. Lawrence had Robert Oppenheimer check the figures, bringing him into the project for the first time. Oliphant found another ally in Oppenheimer, and he not only managed to convince Lawrence and Oppenheimer that an atomic bomb was feasible, but inspired Lawrence to convert his cyclotron into a giant mass spectrometer for electromagnetic isotope separation, a technique Oliphant had pioneered in 1934. Leo Szilard later wrote, "if Congress knew the true history of the atomic energy project, I have no doubt but that it would create a special medal to be given to meddling foreigners for distinguished services, and that Dr Oliphant would be the first to receive one." On 26 October 1942, Oliphant embarked from Melbourne, taking Rosa and the children back with him. The wartime sea voyage on the