Emilio Segre

Cindy Kelly:​ This is Monday, January 30th, 2017. I’m Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation. We are in Washington, D.C., with Bruce Cameron Reed. If you could say your name for us and spell it. Bruce Cameron Reed: Bruce Cameron Reed, B-R-U-C-E  C-A-M-E-R-O-N  R-E-E-D. Kelly:​ Great. Bruce, tell us about yourself. I know you’re a professor at Alma College, […]

Robert Bacher: I presented this [the discovery of the neutron] in the seminar and there were a good many questions. Some people were skeptical. I convinced Ed Condon almost immediately. In fact, within the week we had written a note together on the spin of the neutron because you could work it out. This part […]

Jean Bacher: Ruth Valentine said, “I shall take Ruth [Tolman]’s desk.” She always saved letters. She had marvelous long letters from Robert, you know, especially at the time of the hearings. I knew they were just terribly close and shared a great deal. On the drawer of the desk, she’d said, “Destroy these.” Martin Sherwin: […]

Harry Allen: Mr. Wilson and company set us up a purchase request for a barber chair, because they couldn’t get off work in time to get their hair done. Robert Van Gemert:  There was only one man cutting hair, I think, up there. Allen: The barber service was extremely limited, and we just happen to […]

Rosen: Well, my name is Louis Rosen. I was born in New York City, not the best part of the city. I’m now almost eighty-five years old. My parents were immigrants from Poland.  They were escaping from the pogroms, which were taking place with the Russian Cossacks coming in and raiding villages, especially where Jews […]

Richard Rhodes: An interview with Dr. Stanislaw Ulam in Santa Fe, New Mexico, July 6, 1983. Rhodes: Well I have some questions for you. Ulam: Yes, of course. How long are you staying? Rhodes: I am going to be in the area for until Saturday morning. It would be pleasant to see more of you. […]

[Thanks to Ronald K. Smeltzer for donating the record “To Fermi with Love” to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.] Enrico Fermi: The event that took place in this room ten years ago would not have seemed in any way spectacular to a casual observer. You would have seen a large black graphite structure, of which there is […]

Stephane Groueff: I want to start from the beginning. My book, I intend to start with the year 1942 because otherwise, there is no limit. A few months before the Manhattan District and decision to go— J. Robert Oppenheimer: The decision was actually made on December 6, to take the thing seriously. Groueff: ’41? Oppenheimer: […]

Kelly: Talk about the Manhattan Project and what it was like to be part of it. So if you could start by telling your name and when and where you were born and your education and how you came to be involved. Aeby: Fine. I was born in Mount City, Missouri. My name is Jack […]

The “Rad Lab” was the short name for the Radiological Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Its director was Nobel laureate Ernest O. Lawrence. He gained recognition for his 60″ cyclotron,  a type of particle accelerator first invented in the early 1930s. Known as “atom smashers,” cyclotrons accelerate atoms through a vaccuum and use electromagnets […]