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Christopher Nolan's Hollywood film 'Oppenheimer' tells the story of the father of the atomic bomb. And one of the other key players in the creation of the bomb was the scientist Leo Szilard – he was instrumental to both the creation of the bomb, and later, the fight to stop it being used. The writer Emily Strasser’s family was involved too, and she tells the story of the chain reaction onwards from the splitting of the atom.

After befriending some of the world’s greatest physicists in 1920s Berlin, Albert Einstein among them, Leo Szilard is forced to flee when the Nazis come to power. In London, he discovers the destructive possibilities of harnessing nuclear power; setting the course for the world’s first atomic bomb.

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