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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Oral Histories

Eulalia Quintana Newton’s Interview

Eulalia “Eula” Quintana Newton worked at Los Alamos for a total of 53 years, beginning in 1944. She received a Distinguished Performance Award for her exceptional service to the Los Alamos laboratory. In this interview, she discusses the many jobs she held at Los Alamos. After working in the housing and secretarial departments, she eventually rose to the position of group leader in the mail and records department. Quintana Newton recalls being the first Hispanic woman without a college degree to become a group leader at the laboratory. She also describes the impact of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project on the Española Valley community.

Ruth Howes’s Interview

Ruth Howes is professor emerita of physics and astronomy at Ball State University with an interest in the history of women physicists. She has researched and written on the role of female scientists in the Manhattan Project. Howes is the co-author of “Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project,” which tells the “hidden story of the contribution of women in the effort to develop the atomic bomb.”

Roger Rasmussen’s Interview

Roger Rasmussen was an electrical engineer at Los Alamos and a member of the Special Engineer Detachment. During the Trinity test, he was assigned to evacuate local civilians if necessary. After the war, Rasmussen had a long career at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In this interview, he recounts his arrival at Los Alamos and details his memories of the Trinity test. He also discusses his postwar work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and recalls how Manhattan Project veterans were perceived after the war.

Adrienne Lowry’s Interview

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.