Those two were not the only ones on the planet who understood fission. Had they never been born do you honestly think it would have set back the bomb project that much? Moreover, those two built on what others discovered, radioactive decay papers were published long before they got in the act. Yes, they merit mention in the long long chain of discoveries and people involved, but really, to claim they were giants compared to Rutherford, Bohr or Marie Curie……Giants compared to them? Really? really? The following from wiki…
The discovery of nuclear fission occurred in 1938, following nearly five decades of work on the science of radioactivity and the elaboration of new nuclear physics that described the components of atoms. In 1911, Ernest Rutherford proposed a model of the atom in which a very small, dense and positively-charged nucleus of protons was surrounded by orbiting, negatively-charged electrons (the Rutherford model). Niels Bohr improved upon this in 1913 by reconciling the quantum behavior of electrons (the Bohr model). Work by Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, and Rutherford further elaborated that the nucleus, though tightly bound, could undergo different forms of radioactive decay, and thereby transmute into other elements (for example, by losing an alpha particle). All known radioactive processes before fission changed mass of the atomic nucleus by no more than two protons. Albert Einstein’s principle of mass–energy equivalence described the amount of energy released in such processes, but this could not be harnessed on a large scale. The possibility of combining two light nuclei in nuclear fusion had been studied in connection with the processes which power stars.
After English physicist James Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932,[3] Enrico Fermi and his colleagues in Rome studied the results of bombarding uranium with neutrons in 1934.[4] Fermi concluded that his experiments had created a new element with 94 protons, which he dubbed Hesperium. However, not all were convinced with Fermi’s analysis of his results. The German chemist Ida Noddack notably suggested in 1934 that instead of creating a new, heavier element, that “it is conceivable that the nucleus breaks up into several large fragments.”[5][6] However, Noddack’s conclusion was not pursued
After the Fermi publication, Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, and Fritz Strassmann began performing similar experiments in Berlin…… After…