Pacific Nuclear Tests

Wright Langham was an American biochemist and one of the foremost experts on plutonium.  After completing his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Langham joined the Manhattan Project at the Chicago Met Lab as a member of the Analytical Chemistry Group in 1943. He moved to Los Alamos in 1944 to continue work […]

Marshall Holloway was an American physicist. He received his PhD in physics from Cornell University. In 1942, he directed a secret Manhattan Project assignment at Purdue University. The physicists at Purdue operated the university’s cyclotron to determine cross sections for several molecules, which would prove key to developing the hydrogen bomb. In 1943, Holloway and […]

Ralph Lapp was an American physicist. He was born in Buffalo, New York in 1917. He was completing his PhD at the University of Chicago when he stumbled upon Enrico Fermi’s team working under Stagg’s Field in December of 1942, and was hired on the spot to work on the development of the atomic bomb. He […]

Marshall Rosenbluth was an American physicist who worked on the hydrogen bomb project at Los Alamos during the Cold War. He was recruited by Edward Teller to come to Los Alamos in 1950. He witnessed some nuclear tests in the South Pacific. He helped develop the Metropolis algorithm. He received many awards and prizes for […]

John M. “Jack” Jamison Jr. graduated from Grove City College with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering in June 1944. He was assigned to the Special Engineer Detachment at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. At Oak Ridge, he worked for Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation at the K-25 plant. He managed a crew of men and women who […]

Stafford Leak “Staff” Warren was a Colonel in the Army Medical Corps and the Chief Medical Officer of the Manhattan Engineer District (MED). He also participated in the Trinity Test, early surveys of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Operation Crossroads. EARLY LIFE AND RECRUITMENT Warren was born in Maxwell City, New Mexico, in 1896. His family […]

William R. Purnell (1886-1955) was a Rear Admiral in the US Navy and served as the Navy liaison on the Military Policy Committee for the Manhattan Project. He also represented the Navy on Tinian Island. Purnell graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1908 and served in World War I, earning the Navy Cross for […]

James F. “Jim” Nolan was a Captain in the US Army Medical Corps, the Chief Medical Officer for the Los Alamos site of the Manhattan Project, and a Special Consultant to Project Alberta on Tinian Island. An early recruit to the Manhattan Project, he was deeply involved in the history of the atomic bomb throughout […]

Donald Francis Mastick was an American chemist who worked at Los Alamos and on Tinian as part of Project Alberta. Mastick received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1942. One of Berkeley’s most promising chemistry students, Mastick was recruited to join the Manhattan Project by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Mastick arrived […]

Part of the Special Engineer Detachment (SED), Donald C. Harms was first sent to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to work on the Manhattan Project. Transferred to Los Alamos shortly after, he was selected to become a member of Project Alberta, testing bomb designs for combat use in the modified “Silverplate” B-29s stationed at Wendover, Utah. He […]