Project 4.1
In 1994, a 1953 "Castle Bravo" program prospectus was found which included reference to Project 4.1 apparently written before the "Bravo" shot had occurred. The U.S. government responded that someone had gone back into the project list after the "Bravo" test to insert Project 4.1; thus, according to the U.S. government, the acts were not premeditated. All other U.S. documents point to Project 4.1 having been established after the "Bravo" test—most sources point to its having been organized on March 7, 1954. The final Project 4.1 report began in its preface with the statement that "Operation CASTLE did not include a biomedical program" (it mentions this in discussing the ad hoc nature by which the project personnel were assembled). All official and mainstream historical accounts of the "Bravo" test indicate that its high level of fallout was a result of a miscalculation in relation to its design and was not deliberate (see the Castle Bravo article for more information on the alleged accident).
Joseph Rotblat
At St Bartholomew's, Rotblat worked on the effects of radiation on living organisms, especially on ageing and fertility. This led him to an interest in nuclear fallout, especially strontium-90 and the safe limits of ionising radiation. In 1955, he demonstrated that the contamination caused by the fallout after the Castle Bravo test at Bikini Atoll nuclear test by the United States had been far greater than that stated officially. Until then the official line had been that the growth in the strength of atomic bombs was not accompanied by an equivalent growth in radioactivity released. Japanese scientists who had collected data from a fishing vessel, the "Lucky Dragon", which had inadvertently been exposed to fallout, disagreed with this. Rotblat was able to deduce that the bomb had three stages and showed that the fission phase at the end of the explosion increased the amount of radioactivity by forty times. His paper was taken up by the media and contributed to the public debate that resulted in the ending of atmospheric tests by the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.