Scientific Discoveries

Martin Sherwin: The work must have been sort of very frustrating for a while, before that [Stanislaus] Ulam-[Edward] Teller breakthrough [on the hydrogen bomb]. Ed Hammel: Well, sure. There was—  Sherwin: What were you doing at that time? Hammel: At that point, I continued with having this group in charge of properties of plutonium. But one […]

Small experiments studying the effects of radioactive isotopes, including plutonium, uranium, and polonium, on humans were conducted in the Manhattan Annex of the Strong Memorial Hospital located at the University of Rochester. The purpose of these studies was to examine the safety of small amounts of radiation on those working at other Manhattan Project sites. At […]

Often overlooked, British physicists were the first to realize the feasibility of an atomic bomb and their urgings were vital to the development and success of the Manhattan Project in the United States.   Cavendish Laboratory Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University in England first opened in 1874 under the direction of James Clerk Maxwell, the […]

Before the war, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) was a leading university in the fields of particle and nuclear physics. It was especially known for its experimental physicists. Many scientists who had important roles on the Manhattan Project were affiliated with Caltech, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Tolman, and Robert Bacher. In addition, a […]

Rhodes: Well, I had started to ask you about the Korean War. Was that a shock? Did that worry everyone and accelerate your sense of pressure? Taylor: I don’t think so. I don’t remember any feeling of pressure, that we had to do something by a certain time or else all hell would break lose. […]

Richard Rhodes: Although again, I was struck in Russia with how different a world that was. Ted Taylor: Oh, yeah. Rhodes: How much more closely they were— Taylor: That is why I am so thankful because in many other places people get shot. Rhodes: Yeah. We could not even get directions on the street. Nobody […]

Ed Wood: January 21, 1954 will go down as a significant day in human history. A milestone in man’s scientific progress. For on that day, at Groton, Connecticut, was launched the first nuclear-powered submarine, the Nautilus, powered by the world’s first atomic engine designed to do useful work. With this achievement, man at last has […]

[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 […]

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, […]

Crawford Greenewalt: Crawford Greenewalt. I’m named after my father, Crawford Hallock Greenewalt. The last name, Greenewalt, is spelled G-R-E-E-N-E-W-A-L-T. But in early years in the country, the Greenewalt’s spelled their name various ways. The present spelling may go back several generations. My father was born in 1902, in August. His mother was Mary Hallock, that […]