University Involvement in the Manhattan Project

Susan Gawarecki: My name is Susan Gawarecki, spelled G-A-W-A-R-E-C-K-I, and today is April 3, 2013. I am at the home of Bill Tewes. And Bill, thank you for taking time to tell us about your life. To get started, would you please say your name and spell it. William E. Tewes: My name is William Edward […]

Cindy Kelly: I am Cindy Kelly of the Atomic Heritage Foundation. Today is Thursday, May 2, 2013. I have with me here James Forde, who is going to try to remember something about his Manhattan Project days in New York City. I am going to start with an easy question, which is to have him […]

Cindy Kelly: This is Cindy Kelly at Atomic Heritage Foundation. It is March 20, 2013 in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. And we are delighted to have Larry O’Rourke. His first question is to tell us your name and spell it, please. Lawrence S. O’Rourke: I am Lawrence S. O’Rourke, L-A-W-R-E-N-C-E S-for Stephen O’Rourke, O-’-R-O-U-R-K-E.  And, I like […]

[Interviewed by Cindy Kelly and Tom Zannes.] Tell us your name. John Tepe: I’m John Tepe, T-E-P-E. Tell us about where you grew up and went to school. Tepe: Well, I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, which was my family hometown. My family had been there since 1794, and I was the first to leave. […]

Darragh Nagle: Well, you must realize you’re talking to the people who were very, very junior at the time of the Manhattan Project. We’re mostly the ones that are left, but by that same token we were not privy to the high council—what was going on.  My time started in Chicago. I had been a […]

Harvard University Harvard became an important center for nuclear physics research during the early twentieth century. After Ernest O. Lawrence constructed the first cyclotron at the University of California at Berkeley in 1929, Harvard physicists and engineers such as Harry Mimno, Kenneth Bainbridge, and Edward Purcell began thinking about building their own cylcotron. In 1936, the construction […]

Princeton University was a hotbed for nuclear physics research during the early twentieth century. Much of the research conducted at Princeton allowed scientists to develop and pursue a path to building the world’s first atomic device. In fact, more than two dozen Princetonians were among the core group of brains at Los Alamos, N.M. In […]

Jay Wechsler: Well, my mother was visiting her folks in New York when she decided that it was time, and I was the first child, and I guess she was a little surprised. So I was born in New York even though we didn’t live there. And as soon as we were able we were […]

George Cowan: It’s weighted so heavily in favor—not in favor of—but the emphasis on number one Los Alamos, and then Oak Ridge, and then Hanford, as the three secret cities or something. But the fact is the Met Lab at Chicago was enormously important. The Stagg Field reactor was historic in ’42, and its sort of […]

Donald Trauger: Yes, I’m Donald Trauger. And Trauger is T-R-A-U-G-E-R, Trauger. My mother-in-law when we first married would say auger, Trauger so she could remember it. [Laughter.] Kelly: All right. Well, tell us how you came to Oak Ridge and how—what you did as your role in the Manhattan Project; where you were from and […]