conant, wasn't the kind of person given to fear or exaggeration.et -- >> my grandfather was really so terrified of a nuclear conflict, i think the idea that mutually assured destruction would have held for almost 70 years would have surprised him. >> reporter: in the late '30s dmoont was a brilliant chemist, a veteran of poison gas during world war i and a successful president of harvard university. but his life changed course after albert einstein warned the white house about the potential for extremely powerful bombs. that triggered a desperate race to build a nuclear weapon before hitler's germany. and the task of winning fell to conant a terms of the bomb's development. >> reporter: what happened in the summer of w weapon. a blast so shocking that conant from a nearby bunker was sure the team had miscalculated. >> and he thought in that moment the world is over? >> he did. terrifying. absolutely terrifying. >> reporter: just three weeks later, hiroshima. and then nagasaki. still, the only war-time use of a nuclear weapon. >> we have spent more