Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Haakon Chevalier

Professor of French LiteratureUniversity of California, Berkeley

Haakon Chevalier in 1934. Photo courtesy of the Bancroft Library. Listen to Haakon Chevalier’s Oral History on Voices of the Manhattan Project

Haakon Chevalier was a professor of French literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a close friend of J. Robert Oppenheimer. He was politically active at Berkeley, joining the Teachers’ Union and the ACLU. He was very left-wing and may have been a member of the Communist Party.

In early 1943,  Chevalier told Oppenheimer that he knew of a way to pass information to the Soviets. Oppenheimer rejected Chevalier’s offer, but did not report the exchange for eight months. The Chevalier offer, and Oppenheimer’s belated reporting of it, were dredged up and used against him in 1954 at the hearing that revoked his security clearance. For more information, see Oppenheimer Security Hearing.

Because of his political leanings, Chevalier lost his job at Berkeley in 1950. He was unable to find another professorship in the United States and moved to France. He died in 1985 in Paris.

Related Profiles

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.

Robert M. Underhill

Los Alamos, NM

Robert Mackenzie “Bob” Underhill (1893-1988) was a finance officer for the University of California during the Manhattan Project.

Paul Wilkinson

Oak Ridge, TN

After graduating from Williams College, Paul Wilkinson joined the Manhattan Project. He arrived in Oak Ridge in 1943, where he was sent to the Y-12 plant.

Roy W. Carlson

University of California, Berkeley

Roy W. Carlson was an engineer. He worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and the University of California, Berkeley, as a member of the Explosives Division and Group X-2A.