Oral Histories

Andrew Hanson is the son of Alfred Hanson and Henry Frisch is the son of David Frisch. Alfred and David were both physicists who worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project, and Andrew and Henry were both born there during the war. Alfred and David used the Van de Graaff long tank generator to measure neutron cross sections in plutonium. In this interview with Robert S. Norris, Frisch and Hanson discuss their father’s work at Los Alamos and relay a number of anecdotes their parents told them about life at Los Alamos and preparing for and witnessing the Trinity test. Hanson remembers a story his mother told him about his father accidentally vaporizing the world’s supply of metallic plutonium. Frisch and Hanson also recall a performance of the opera “Doctor Atomic” and talking to the actors about the actual people they portrayed. The pair also ask about the source of plutonium for several experiments and the existence of a third bomb on Tinian.

Adrienne Lowry arrived at Los Alamos in 1942 after her husband, radiochemist and co-discoverer of plutonium, Joseph Kennedy, was selected by J. Robert Oppenheimer to lead the chemistry division at Los Alamos. Lowry recalls the early days of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, when construction was just beginning and housing remained scarce for many of the workers who had just arrived. Prior to the birth of her first child, Lowry helped carry mail between Los Alamos and Santa Fe. She recalls meeting many of the famous scientists who worked on the bomb, including Hans Bethe, Enrico Fermi, Art Wahl, Glenn Seaborg, and Oppenheimer. When Arthur Compton offered Joseph Kennedy a position as the chair of the chemistry department at Washington University after the War, Lowry and her husband moved to St. Louis.