Stephane Groueff

Stephane Groueff: [Enrico] Fermi was not considered as a foreigner? William Sturm: Oh, no. Groueff: There was no jealousy by the American top scientists? Sturm: No, no, no, no. Science at this level is absolutely international. There is an international aspect. Groueff: Did he speak good English? Sturm: No, a heavy accent. Groueff: Heavy accent but— […]

Stephane Groueff: Okay, now it’s recording. Dr. Foote, you started telling me from the beginning— Frank G. Foote: Knowing nothing about the uranium, and this was supposed to be my new business; I’d go over to the library to find out what was known. Groueff: In 1942? Foote: In 1942, August. Ordinarily, you’d expect this […]

Stephane Groueff: Recording Dr. Rudolph. Dave Rudolph: As far as the organizational structure was concerned, when I reported to work, I reported to a man who had the administrative responsibilities for purchasing for the project and warehousing. You might say purchasing and supply functions – warehousing the stores, shipping to a small extent. No sooner […]

Stephane Groueff: Start from the beginning and if you can give me in a few words the history of how it started, who actually came into contract, and how?  Leroy Jackson: With respect to the construction of the City of Oak Ridge, Stone & Webster was retained. I believe it is what we classify as […]

[We would like to thank Robert S. Norris, author of the definitive biography of General Leslie R. Groves, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man, for taking the time to read over these transcripts for misspellings and other errors.] General Leslie R. Groves: All right now what else is there? […]

[Audio distortion occurs throughout the interview.] Stephane Groueff: Recording interview with Mr. Leon Love at Oak Ridge July 15, 1963. Mr. Love works with Y-12. Would you mind repeating sort of some of the characteristics of Y-12, some of the figures? For instance, how many buildings? How many magnets? How many Alpha [calutrons] and Beta […]

Stephane Groueff: Now it is recording Dr. Langsdorf. If you can tell me in a few words how you got connected with the project and where you came from. Alexander Langsdorf: Oh, in the first place, as soon as I got my PhD at MIT, I went out to Berkeley as a national research fellow […]

Groueff: General Nichols, Part 2. Nichols: But Dobie [Percival Keith] came back immediately, or shortly thereafter, with the suggestion we build more gaseous diffusion base plants, and that was why we built the K-27 plant. Groueff: A base? Nichols: Yeah, a base. See, more base, to where he then optimized. How do you optimize the K-25 system with the […]

Raemer Schreiber: I think the only point that is of any interest in this regard to pick up is perhaps the fact that the group of us who came here to work on the so-called water boil reactor had been working together at Purdue University on the very first measurements of the so-called deuterium tritium […]

Richard Baker: The first plutonium that, other than the cyclotron that produced plutonium, was made at what was called the Clinton Piles at old X10 down in Oak Ridge. The Chicago Met Lab worked on the micro scale reduction of the metal. This produced rather small quantities but never enough quantities to study its properties in […]