Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Oral Histories

To Fermi ~ with Love – Part 4

The fourth and final part of the program details Fermi’s postwar work with the Institute of Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago, and describes his outrage over the revocation of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Friends and colleagues recall his teaching style and boundless energy, and reflect on his character and personality. For his closest friends, his legacy extends beyond his remarkable scientific contributions. They remember his gift for teaching, simplicity, honesty, and lack of conceit. The program narrates the end of Fermi’s life, and concludes with an excerpt from his speech at the tenth anniversary of the operation of Chicago Pile-1.

John Marshall’s Interview

After receiving his doctorate, John Marshall was hired to assist Leo Szilard with his experiments at Columbia. Afterwards, Marshall traveled to Chicago to work on Chicago Pile-1, and finally to Richland to work on the B Reactor at the Hanford site. Marshall was on duty when the reactor shut down due to xenon poisoning. He discusses his experience working for Szilard and alongside Fermi, as well as the steps taken when the B Reactor shut down on his watch.

Leona Marshall Libby’s Interview

Leona Woods, later Leona Woods Marshall and Leona Marshall Libby, was 23 in 1942, the only woman present when Enrico Fermi’s nuclear pile at the University of Chicago went critical and into the history books. She moved to Hanford in 1944 with her husband, fellow physicist John Marshall. Marshall Libby was one of the few women scientists in the Manhattan Project and probably the most well known. Even so, during an interview she laughed off questions about what it was like to be so distinctive. She did mention DuPont had been thoughtful enough to provide her with a private bathroom at the reactor buildings.

John Wheeler’s Interview (1986)

John Archibald Wheeler was the leading physicist in residence at Hanford. He solved the riddle of the B Reactor going dead a few hours after it started, an event that threatened to delay seriously the first production of plutonium. Early in his career at Princeton, in 1939, Wheeler and Danish physicist Niels Bohr collaborated to develop the first general theory of the mechanism of fission, which included identifying the nuclei most susceptible to fission, a landmark accomplishment that helped make Wheeler, at age 28, world fa­mous among nuclear physicists. After the war, at Los Alamos, he directed the group which produced the conceptual design for the first family of thermonuclear weapons. He became interested in astrophysics and coined the term “black holes.” In 1976, Wheeler joined the department of physics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was interviewed.

Jack Miller’s Interview

Jack Miller came to Richland, Washington as an employee of Remington Arms, a munitions manufacturer operated by the DuPont Company. In 1944, he was assigned to work in the control room at Hanford’s B Reactor and was eventually promoted to the rank of Chief Reactor Operator. His position required both confidence and an acute attention to detail, as his work was often measured in tenths of inches. Over the course of his time at Hanford, Miller became intimately acquainted with the reactor and its inner workings. He shares this knowledge in his interview, specifically focusing the design and engineering of the reactor itself, the water cooling system, and the transportation process by which irradiated rods were moved for plutonium extraction. He explains the elaborate safety procedures reactor operators and others working close to the B Reactor underwent to avoid radiation.

Dee McCullough’s Interview

Dee McCullough began working as an instrument technician at Hanford in early 1944. As a former sound engineer, McCullough was tasked with installing nuclear safety monitors on the reactors at Hanford. McCullough, who worked closely with many of the famous scientists at the Manhattan project, discusses his interactions with Enrico Fermi and Leona Woods Marshall. In addition, he talks about the various safety methods DuPont put in place to protect their workers.