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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Robert E. Johnson

Research AssistantChicago, IL

Manhattan Project VeteranProject Worker/Staff
Scientists at the 20th reunion of the Chicago Pile-1 going critical. Photo Credit: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, [apf3-00242], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Robert E. Johnson was a research assistant at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory (“Met Lab”) during the Manhattan Project.

Johnson worked in the Chicago Pile 1 (CP-1) group. On December 2, 1942, he was on one of the forty-nine scientists, who witnessed the Chicago Pile 1 at Stagg Field become the world’s first nuclear reactor to critical. A photograph of the Chicago Pile-1 members including Johnson (fourth row, left-most) at the twentieth anniversary appears on the left.

At the age of ninety-one, Robert E. Johnson died in Palos Park, IL on December 10, 2009.

 

For more information about Johnson and the Chicago Pile 1 Pioneers, please see the following reference:

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