Arthur H. Snell, a nuclear and atomic physicist, held a Ph.D. from McGill University in Montreal. He joined the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago in 1940, where he led the Cyclotron Section, and transferred to Clinton Laboratories, now Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), in Tennessee in 1944. He conducted a series of experiments to explore the properties of water-uranium lattices and later carried out some of the first studies of neutron decay.
Snell was director of the Physics Division (1948-1957), director of the Thermonuclear Division (1958-1967), an ORNL assistant director (1957-1970), and an ORNL associate director (1970-1973) before his retirement as senior research advisor in 1973. He continued to serve as a consultant to ORNL until his death in 1989. He was a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.