Experiments with the fission of uranium were already going on at universities and research institutes in the United States. Alfred Lee Loomis was supporting Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley Radiation Laboratory and Enrico Fermi at Columbia. Vannevar Bush was also doing similar research at Washington, D.C.-based Carnegie Institution. After the April 29, 1940 spring meeting of the American Physical Society, the New York Times reported that conferees argued "the probability of some scientist blowing up a sizable portion of the earth with a tiny bit of uranium."