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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Edrey Smith Albaugh

StenographerChicago, IL

Manhattan Project VeteranProject Worker/Staff
Sketch of Chicago Pile-1 by Melvin A. Miller

Edrey Smith Albaugh (1920-2009) was an American stenographer who worked on the Manhattan Project. 

Albaugh was born in Chicago, IL on August 11, 1920. She received a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College in 1942. She then joined the Manhattan Project at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago where she worked as Glenn Seaborg’s executive secretary. 

While working on the Manhattan Project, she met a young research chemist named Frederic William Albaugh whom she married in 1944. After the war, the two moved to Los Angeles briefly before moving to Richland, WA. 

While Albaugh and her husband believed initially that they would be in Washington for less than a year, she lived in Washington for the rest of her life.

Albaugh died on January 25, 2009 in Vancouver, WA. 

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