Walt Simon, a chemist, was Hanford’s first Operations Manager. Before joining the Manhattan Project, he was plant manager at Wabash River Ordnance Works, a DuPont plant near Terre Haute, Indiana. He moved to Richland in the summer of 1944. He watched the B Reactor go critical, and then shut down due to the Xenon poisoning.
All images of Walter Simon that appear here are courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library and are not property of the Atomic Heritage Foundation.