World War II
During World War II, he initially worked on radar in Suffolk, then with Cecil Powell in Bristol on a project that attempted to use photographic methods to detect fast particles from radioactive decay. James Chadwick recruited him to a Cambridge University team working on a possible heavy water reactor. The team was part of the British Tube Alloys directorate which was merged into the American Manhattan Project, the successful effort to create a nuclear weapon. In January 1943 the Cambridge team including Nunn May transferred to the Montreal Laboratory which was building a reactor at Chalk River near Ottawa, Canada. His Canadian job ended in September 1945, and he returned to his lecturing post in London.
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