Raymond Sheline was a chemist at Columbia University and a member of the Special Engineer Detachment at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos.
Sheline received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1949 and was a professor at Florida State University for 48 years. Among other accomplishments, he helped establish a nuclear chemistry lab at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and published more than 400 scientific papers. He died on February 10, 2016 in Fort Meyers, FL.
In this lecture he gave in 1995, Sheline discusses how he initially joined the Manhattan Project, his work on gaseous diffusion at Colombia University, his military draft, and how he became a member of the Special Engineer Detachment at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. He also delves into the history atomic and radioactive research and the lives of key figures who were integral in developing the bomb, including Oppenheimer, Fermi, and Teller.