Elspeth G. Bobbs

GardenerSanta Fe, NM

Britain

Expert

Listen to Elspeth G. Bobbs’s Oral History on Voices of the Manhattan Project

Elspeth G. Bobbs was born in 1920 in Devonshire County, England. During World War II she came to the United States with her parents. Shortly after, she moved to Santa Fe for work. Here she met and befriended Joseph Rotblat, a Polish physicist who was part of the British Mission at Los Alamos.

In Santa Fe, she met her husband, Howard Bobbs. In 1955, they opened a bookstore, called “The Book Specialist,” and in 1967 they purchased four acres of land, and named their new estate: Querencia, meaning “The Beloved Place.”

Later in life Elspeth acquired gardening as a hobby, and today “The Beloved Place” is her popular and well maintained garden. In 1984, Elspeth was named a Santa Fe Living Treasure, and in 1999 she was named New Mexico’s Philanthropist of the Year.

More information on Elspeth and photographs of the garden can be found here.

Elspeth G. Bobbs’s Timeline

1955 Bobbs opened the “The Book Specialist.

1984 Bobbs was named a Santa Fe Living Treasure.

1999 Bobbs was named New Mexico’s Philanthropist of the Year.

1920 Born in England.

Related Profiles

Ray Smith

Trinity Site

Ray Smith is the historian at the Y-12 National Security Complex. His specific focus is the history of Oak Ridge, and he is intimately acquainted with the uranium enrichment processes undertaken at the Y-12, K-25, and S-50 plants during the Manhattan Project, and how the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs worked.

Harrie Massey

University of California, Berkeley

Harrie Massey (1908-1983) was an Australian physicist. A brilliant student of physics, Massey arrived from his native Australia at Cambridge College in the United Kingdom on an academic scholarship.

William Penney

Los Alamos, NM

William Penney (1909-1991) was a British mathematician and physicist. William Penney’s first assignment of the war was a research position with the Royal Navy, studying collisions, explosions and shockwaves and searching for ways to use hydrodynamics to assist the navy.

Claude Lyneis

University of California, Berkeley

Claude Lyneis is a nuclear physicist specializing in accelerator physics. Lyneis received his B.A. in Physics from the University of Washington in 1965 and his Ph.