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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Norma Gross

ChemistLos Alamos, NM

Manhattan Project VeteranScientistWoman Scientist
Norma Gross

Norma Gross was an American chemist. She was married to an Army lieutenant who was stationed at Los Alamos during the Second World War. Gross, who had a master’s in chemistry from Bryn Mawr, joined the Women’s Army Corps and was assigned to Los Alamos in 1944. Gross was part of a group that produced radioactive lanthanum-140 for the atomic bombs’ initiators. She was often mistakenly written up as “Norman Gross” by writers who assumed she was a man.

After the war, Gross taught chemistry at Queens College in New York until her retirement in 1993. She died on January 22, 2009 in New York. 

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