Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Wendell Edwards

Columbia University
African-American

Wendell Edwards was born in Snow Hill, Alabama in 1907. Although his father was the founder of Snow Hill Institute in 1893, He graduated from Laurinburg Institute in 1925. From there he attended Talladega College, and graduated with a degree in Mathematics and Physics. He later attended Columbia University during the formation of the Manhattan Project, and graduated with a Masters Degree in Mathematics and Physics. He did research under Professors Fermi, Szilard, Zinn, and Anderson. His identification card listed him as a Junior Physicist. He died on May 25, 1975.

Related Profiles

Blanche J. Lawrence

Chicago, IL

Blanche J. Lawrence was an African-American research assistant in the Health Division of the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory (“Met Lab”) during the Manhattan Project.

Enrico Fermi

Chicago, IL

Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) was an Italian physicist and recipient of the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics.   In 1942, Fermi relocated to the Chicago Met Lab, where he built an experimental reactor pile under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.

Jasper B. Jeffries

Chicago, IL

Jasper Brown Jeffries was an American physicist. Jeffries was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on April 15, 1912.

Eric Pierce

Oak Ridge, TN

Eric Pierce is a senior scientist and leader of the Earth Sciences Group in the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.