Scientific Discoveries

Sir Hugh Taylor: I had been requested by the British Government to find out certain things. They wanted, for example, to know whether they could use this thing and the General Electric Company made it available to them on the condition that their affiliate in England was entrusted with the responsibility of supplying it. It […]

Groueff: And so you have the tank. You have all these military things. And then you finally got the atomic bomb. Keller: Yes. Groueff: What date did [General Leslie] Groves come to you? Keller: That is all in the book. Groueff: That was in ’43. Keller: You will get that all out of the book. […]

Stephane Groueff: Hello, recording January 19, 1965, Florida, Coral Gables. Mr. Hobbs, H-O-B-B-S. J.C. Hobbs: I was born in West Virginia, just west of Pittsburgh up in the panhandle. My father and mother were both educators and in 1893 I was five years old, we came to Florida. He was an educator and also an […]

Interviewer: December 2, 1962 marks the twentieth anniversary of the first nuclear chain reaction achieved at the University of Chicago. That day a group of scientists, led by the late Dr. Enrico Fermi, operated man’s first atomic reactor. The occasion ushered in the atomic age. Present at that historic moment was Dr. Norman Hilberry former […]

Keller: My father was a very poor boy. And, in fact, their family had been broken up when he was eleven years of age. And he was indentured to a Mennonite preacher farmer in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania who raised him. And when he was twenty, he went into business as a horse dealer in the […]

Stephane Groueff: We could start now with your biography and where you were born. I see that you were born in Cleveland. General Kenneth Nichols: Well, I was born in a little suburb of Cleveland called West Park, Ohio [on November 13, 1907]. Groueff: West Park, Ohio. Nichols: Later became a part of Cleveland. Groueff: […]

Richard Rhodes: This will be a tape of an interview with Doctor Segrè. That’s E-m-i-l-i-o, S-e-g-r-e at his home in Lafayette, California on the 29th of June 1983.  I have been, for example, through the Oppenheimer Papers, I’ve been through the [Leo] Szilard Papers in La Jolla. All of the books, most of the books […]

Stephane Groueff: So I think the best thing is just talk. So if you want to start from the beginning and tell me a little bit about yourself, Dr. Wheeler, and where you come from and a few words about your career, and how you happen to get involved with the atomic project. John Wheeler: […]

Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation, and it’s Monday, September 8, 2014. I’m at the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, with David Kaiser. The first thing I’d like him to do is tell us his name and spell it. David Kaiser: My name is David Kaiser. The last name is […]

Richard Rhodes: Interview with Dr. Kistiakowsky in Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 15, 1982. I have done a great deal of reading into the literature; there are probably two hundred books that are built around the subject that I’ve looked at, including yours, which I enjoyed. Can I go back to some very early things?  George Kistiakowsky: […]