Science News has been covering nuclear physics since our earliest incarnation, starting with scientists effort to decode the secrets of the atom. In the 1930s, readers learned about the discovery of the positron and scientists first splitting of a uranium atom. The first sustained nuclear reaction followed soon after, in a repurposed squash court at the University of Chicago in 1942.By then, what had once been a pursuit of basic knowledge had become a desperate wartime race to develop a nuclear weapon. The United States won that race. In 1945, U.S. forces dropped two atomic bombs on Japan that destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hastening the end of World War II.