Louisville native John Tepe began working for the DuPont Company in 1939 after he received his bachelor’s degree and his master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Louisville. In 1942, Tepe was transferred to the University of Chicago where he worked on a wide variety of problems in areas such as synthesis and chemical separation that proved integral to the design and construction of the plants at Hanford. He worked alongside a number of the lumniaries of the day, including Enrico Fermi and Glenn Seaborg, and worked at Stagg field, where the Chicago-Pile 1 reactor was run.