Charles Allen Thomas (1900-1982) was an American chemist and industrial leader.
Thomas was recruited to join the Manhattan Project in 1942 by General Groves, who offered him a postion as a deputy to Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. Thomas, however, did not wish to move his family or give up his responsibilities at the Monsanto Chemical Company; instead, he agreed to coordinate plutonium purification and production at many Manhattan Project locations including Los Alamos, the Met Lab in Chicago, the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, and Ames Laboratory in Iowa.
In 1943, Thomas was tasked with developing a method to separate polonium, a rare and unusual element which was selected as the “initiator” for the plutionium bomb. Thomas decided to carry out this work in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio. Using eminent domain, the government acquired the sprawling Runnymede Playhouse in Oakwood as a laboratory. The polonium made there was shipped to Los Alamos and assembled into initiators for the Gadget and Fat Man plutonium bombs.