Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Wilber A. Stevens was an army officer in charge of overseeing construction at Los Alamos. He helped choose the site where the Manhattan Project would test its first atomic bomb.

According to Robert W. Henderson, head of the Engineering Group in the Explosives Division, Stevens coined the name Trinity when the two were discussing the best way to transport the Jumbo device from the railroad. “A devout Roman Catholic, Stevens observed that the railroad siding was called ‘Pope’s Siding.’ He [then] remarked that the Pope had special access to the Trinity, and that the scientists would need all the help they could get to move the 214 ton Jumbo to its proper spot.”

Related Profiles

Donald C. Harms

Tinian Island

Part of the Special Engineer Detachment (SED), Donald C. Harms was first sent to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to work on the Manhattan Project.

G. W. Kearsely

Y-12 Plant

G. W. Kearsely worked for the Tennessee Eastman Corporation at the Y-12 Plant.

James Franck

Chicago, IL

James Franck (1882-1964) was a German physicist and winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics.   During the Manhattan Project, Franck served as Director of the Chemistry Division of the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory.

H.D. Reese, Jr.

Hanford, WA