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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Alan U. Seybolt

MetallurgistLos Alamos, NM

Manhattan Project VeteranScientist
Alan U. Seybolt

Alan Upson Seybolt was a metallurgist who worked at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.

Seybolt married Dorothea “Dot” Hoover Seybolt, and the couple had two sons. The family moved together to Los Alamos when Seybolt began work with the Manhattan Project.

In early summer 1944, Seybolt was put in charge of a uranium metallurgy group in the Chemistry and Metallurgy Division at Los Alamos. The group investigated impurities that arose during the process of uranium remelting, and worked to devise more sophisticated fabrication procedures to preserve the enriched uranium metal. After it was discovered that plutonium was more corrosive than uranium, Seybolt was put in charge of another group focusing on miscellaneous metallurgy. The group tested coatings to protect the plutonium and those working with it.

After the war, Seybolt worked as a research associate in the Metallurgy Research Department at the research laboratories of General Electric Company. While with GE, Seybolt published a textbook, Procedures in Experimental Metallurgy, and papers on metallurgy, including a patent for a coating for nickel base superalloy bodies. 

Alan U. Seybolt’s Timeline
1910 May 29th Born in New York.

1944 Jun1945 Aug Head of metallurgy groups at Los Alamos.

1953 Published the book “Procedures in Experimental Metallurgy” with Joseph Burke.

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