Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Race for the Atomic Bomb

Oral History
Hanford 25th Anniversary Celebration
April 8, 2016
[Many thanks to Claude Lyneis for donating this footage to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.] Narrator: About seventy-five miles northwest of Walla Walla, Washington, in an isolated expanse of open desert, civilization entered into a new age, an age from which it would never emerge the same. Here, in the home of the Wanapum Indians, the […]
Oral History
Raymond Grills’s Interview
April 6, 2016
Stephane Groueff: Dr. Raymond Grills, DuPont, Wilmington. Raymond Grills: I’m not sure just where we ought to start on explaining this, but perhaps we’ll explain it in this way. First off, the slug itself was a piece of metal, an inch to an inch-and-a-half in diameter and approximately five to six inches long. This material, […]
Oral History
John DeWire’s Interview
March 22, 2016
Martin Sherwin: This is an interview with John DeWire at Cornell University in his office at Newman Hall 228, Newman. Today is May 5, 1982.    You were with Robert Wilson’s group from Princeton that was recruited by [J. Robert] Oppenheimer in ’43, right? Late ’43, was it? John DeWire: Early ’43. Sherwin: Early ’43. DeWire: I […]
Oral History
Gerhart Friedlander’s Interview
March 16, 2016
Gerhart Friedlander: My name is Gerhart Friedlander. Interviewer: What was your role in the Manhattan Project? Friedlander: I got into the Manhattan Project very early; in fact, before there was an official Manhattan Project. I was a graduate student at Berkeley at the University of California. My thesis advisor was Glenn Seaborg, who later on […]
Oral History
Hans Bethe’s Interview (1982) – Part 2
March 4, 2016
Hans Bethe: The other was M – A – D, MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction], which essentially says that nuclear weapons make sense only as a safeguard against nuclear weapons. As [Wolfgang] Panofsky has said recently, and there is actually an article by him, “It is not a doctrine. It is a fact of life. Nothing […]
Oral History
Norris Bradbury’s Interview – Part 1
March 2, 2016
 Martin Sherwin: This morning I am making arrangements to interview Norris Bradbury in Los Alamos, New Mexico. January 10, 1985. How would you characterize the major problems that [J. Robert] Oppenheimer had when he first got the job as the administrator for Los Alamos? Or at least, when you came on? Norris Bradbury: Let’s get this […]
Oral History
General Kenneth Nichols’s Interview – Part 3
February 23, 2016
General Kenneth Nichols: —found we did not have the authority to satisfy DuPont. Stephane Groueff: But why did DuPont challenge your authority? Nichols: Because they had trouble, in World War I, being called munitions makers and investigated after World War I, so they are more conservative than most companies. And they wanted to have in their […]
Oral History
Sir Rudolf Peierls’s Interview
February 1, 2016
Martin Sherwin: This is Martin Sherwin. I’ll be interviewing Sir Rudolf Peierls at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Today’s date is June 6th, 1979.  You first met [J.Robert] Oppenheimer in Zurich in 1929? Rudolf Peierls: Right, yes. Sherwin: At that time, I think you mentioned you were working with [Wolfgang] Pauli’s group? […]
Oral History
Walt Grisham’s Interview
January 26, 2016
Walt Grisham: Okay, what you’re looking at is our old family well. It’s a little different than it used to be, because it’s sitting kind of up on the top of a bank here. After the project was built, they did a little roadwork out here and cut it way down. But where I am […]
Oral History
Isabella Karle’s Interview (2005)
January 19, 2016
Isabella Karle: Isabella Karle. I-S-A-B-E-L-L-A K-A-R-L-E Cindy Kelly: Terrific. Could you tell us how you happened to become part of the Manhattan Project? Karle: My husband, Jerome Karle, completed his work for the PhD degree about four months before I completed mine. By the time I had completed my work, he was already ensconced at […]