Race for the Atomic Bomb

Ralph Lapp:  I am Ralph Lapp, L-A-P-P. I am a physicist, nuclear physicist, an author, and a consultant. I have engaged in finance and technology. Interviewer: Great. What can you tell us about your role in the Manhattan Project? Lapp: Well, my role was quite a small one, but to me fascinating. I was in […]

Ted Rockwell: It’s Theodore Rockwell, R – O – C – K – W – E – L – L. And what do you want to know? Cindy Kelly: Okay. Tell us about how you happened to go to the Manhattan Project? Rockwell: Well, they were interviewing at school. I came along interviewing for a […]

Philip Abelson: My name is Philip Abelson. I was the son of two Norwegian immigrants. My father was born north of the Arctic Circle, and my mother was born in middle Norway. I visited the birthplaces of both of them. They were very wonderful parents. I couldn’t have had better parents. My father got his […]

Walter Goodman: My name is Walter Goodman and I was born in 1922, which is a very long time ago. I was particularly interested in engineering and in the military from the time I was a young boy. When I did get into the service, I ended up continuing in school, and finished electrical engineering. […]

Richard Rhodes: You said [Richard] Courant’s work added realism? Ted Taylor: Yeah. Rhodes: How so? Taylor: By going over various tricks for dealing with the discontinuities, the singularities in the hydrodynamics. I had the impression that he was very helpful to people like Bob Richtmyer. I don’t know that Richard himself came up with anything […]

Robert Lamphere: One of the British newspapers speculated about allowing the FBI into see this guy [Klaus Fuchs], because we might actually use the third degree against him – which we thought was funny as hell. But right off the bat, he wasn’t sure he wanted to tell me anything, because of what we filed […]

Charles Critchfield: Is that your book, by the way? Richard Rhodes: Yes. Critchfield: Making of the Atomic Bomb? Rhodes: Yes. Critchfield: I’ve always heard it, Making of the Bomb. No, I didn’t know it was your book. Rubby Sherr sent me that, and he also sent me excerpts from two or three other books on the bomb. Rubby was […]

Charles Critchfield was a mathematical physicist assigned to work on the development of gun-type fission weapons, and eventually implosion-type weapons, at Los Alamos. He returned to Los Alamos in 1952 to work on the development of the hydrogen bomb. In this interview, Critchfield explores the personalities of his fellow Manhattan Project scientists, including Edward Teller, […]

[Thanks to Ronald K. Smeltzer for donating the record “To Fermi with Love” to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.] Narrator: It was a major emotional decision for Mrs. Fermi, causing her great pain. She had been born in Rome, always lived there. Her relatives and friends were there. She felt she belonged to Rome, but in May […]

Norman Brown: My name is Norman L. Brown. Brown is spelled as Brown is usually spelled, without an E. Cindy Kelly: Great, okay. Why don’t you start by telling us how you became part of the Manhattan Project? Brown: I was a sophomore at MIT. I was talked into enlisting in what was called then […]