Rose Bethe and her husband, Nobel Prize winner Hans Bethe, moved to Los Alamos in early 1943 when Hans was appointed leader of the Theoretical Division for the Manhattan Project.
During the initial stages of the Project, Rose worked in the housing office, where she assigned incoming scientists and their families to houses and showed them where site facilities were located. When Rose became pregnant with her first child, Henry, she resigned her position to help physicist Bruno Rossi wire electronics boards. The Bethes developed a close relationship with Rudolf and Eugenia Peierls, who arrived in Los Alamos after the British Mission joined the Manhattan Project in 1944.
After the war, the Bethes returned to Ithaca, New York and Hans resumed his professorship at Cornell University.