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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

William G. Hudgins

Special Engineer DetachmentLos Alamos, NM

Manhattan Project VeteranMilitary VeteranSpecial Engineer Detachment
Bill Hudgins Listen to William G. Hudgins’s Oral History on Voices of the Manhattan Project

William G. (“Bill”) Hudgins spent most of childhood years in New Mexico. He first heard about a secret wartime laboratory at Los Alamos in 1943, when he was a student at the University of New Mexico.

Hudgins joined the Manhattan Project after writing a letter to Dorothy McKibbin. After briefly being called away for Army training, he returned to Los Alamos as a chemist and metallurgist with the Special Engineer Detachment.

William G. Hudgins’s Timeline
1924 Sep Born in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

1942 Enrolled in the U.S. Navy V-12 Program at the University of New Mexico.

1943 Aug 8th Joined the Manhattan Project as an assistant to chemist Keaton Keller at Los Alamos.

1943 Sep Briefly left Los Alamos after being drafted.

19441945 Returned to Los Alamos as a member of the Special Engineer Detachment, working on chemistry and metallurgy.

Bill Hudgins’s Los Alamos ID badge

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