The discovery of fission raised the possibility that an extremely powerful atomic bomb could be created.[7] The term was already familiar to the British public through the writings of H. G. Wells, in his 1913 novel The World Set Free.[8] Sir Henry Tizard's Committee on the Scientific Survey of Air Defence was originally formed to study the needs of anti-aircraft warfare, but branched out to study air warfare generally.[9] In May 1939, a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe in September 1939, it was directed to conduct research into the feasibility of atomic bombs.[10] Tizard tasked George Paget Thomson, the professor of physics at Imperial College London, and Mark Oliphant, an Australian physicist at the University of Birmingham, with carrying out a series of experiments on uranium.