X-Nico

26 unusual facts about Manhattan Project


Alexander Inn

The Alexander Inn, originally known as The Guest House, is an historic building in Oak Ridge, Tennessee that was built during the Manhattan Project to house official visitors and that later was used as a hotel.

A wood-framed building, similar to many other World War II period “H-plan” buildings, it served as guest quarters to a number of dignitaries during the top-secret Manhattan Project, including Enrico Fermi, Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves.

Asaph Hall

This paper is a very early documented use of random sampling (which Nicholas Metropolis would name the Monte Carlo method during the Manhattan Project of World War II) in scientific inquiry.

El Malpais National Monument

In the 1940s the Malpais lava field was one of the eight candidate sites considered by the Manhattan Project to test detonate the first atomic bomb, the Trinity nuclear test, which did occur to the south at White Sands Proving Ground.

Eugene Rabinowitch

During World War II, Rabinowitch, a Russian émigré, worked in the Metallurgical Laboratory (or "Met Lab"), the Manhattan Project's division at the University of Chicago.

Eugene T. Booth

During the Manhattan Project, Dunning conducted pioneering work at Columbia University on gaseous diffusion to separate uranium isotopes; others working on the project included Booth, Henry A. Boorse, Willard F. Libby, Alfred O. C. Nier, and Francis G. Slack.

Frank Oppenheimer

A younger brother of renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Oppenheimer conducted research on aspects of nuclear physics during the time of the Manhattan Project, and made contributions to uranium enrichment.

Frank Spedding

In 1941 he was asked to work on the research which later became known as the Manhattan Project and led to the development of the atomic bomb.

Frank W. Bubb, Sr.

He was a part of the team that developed the cyclotron that produced the first batch of plutonium for the then secret program only referred to as the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb.

G. B. Pegram

George Braxton Pegram (October 24, 1876 – August 12, 1958) was an American physicist who played a key role in the technical administration of the Manhattan Project.

Harrie Massey

Massey left the Admiralty in 1943 to join the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research mission at Berkeley, California, in connection with the Manhattan Project.

Herb Grosch

In 1945, he was hired by IBM to do backup calculations for the Manhattan Project working at Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University.

John R. Huizenga

During World War II, Huizenga supervised teams at the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tenn. involved in enriching uranium used in the atomic weapon dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945.

Leon Davidson

While a graduate student at the Columbia School of Engineering, he was personally selected by the Dean, John R. Dunning, to join the Manhattan Project, the US atomic bomb development program.

Leonard M. Rieser

Leonard M. Rieser (18 May 1922–15 December 1998) was an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and later for nuclear disarmament.

Lev Vasilevsky

Lev Vasilevsky, also known as Leonid A. Tarasov, was the KGB Mexico City Illegal Resident during much of the period of the Manhattan Project.

Oh, Manhattan

The name "Oh, Manhattan" was derived from a song written by original vocalist Donny Thomas about The Manhattan Project .

Oliver Haywood

Oliver Garfield Haywood, Jr., (29 November 1911 – 25 May 2002) was a United States Army officer during World War II who served with the Manhattan Project.

Radium Yellowknife

One of the fleets most important ports of call was Port Radium, on Great Bear Lake, the source of much of the Uranium used by the Manhattan Project during World War 2.

Samuel Goudsmit

Alsos was part of the Manhattan Project, which was designed to assess the progress of the Nazi atomic bomb project.

Taylor Drysdale

He later earned master's degrees in nuclear physics and mathematics from the University of Michigan, joined the U.S. military, worked on the Manhattan Project, and retired from the U.S. Air Force as a colonel.

Ted Doyle

It was later discovered that he had a small part in the Manhattan Project, America's effort to build the atomic bomb.

The Ash Garden

He becomes a part of the Manhattan Project, witnesses the tests, and travels to Hiroshima recording the aftermath.

The House on 92nd Street

Gebhardt gives Dietrich papers to transmit immediately to Germany; they contain part of Process 97, a key part of the atomic bomb project.

United States Navy Nuclear Propulsion

The United States Navy first began research into the applications of nuclear power in 1946 at the Manhattan Project’s nuclear power-focused laboratory to develop a nuclear power plant.

Wilson Marcy Powell

Upon finishing the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1942, Powell began work in the Manhattan Project.


Alfred Beebe Caywood

In 1944, Caywood became involved with air services for Eldorado Mining and Refining, resupplying the uranium mine on Great Bear Lake as part of the Manhattan Project.

Anthony French

By 1944, Tube Alloys had been merged with the American Manhattan Project and he was sent to Los Alamos.

Audubon High School

William Siri (1919-2004, Class of 1937), was a part of the Manhattan Project which was responsible for the development of the atomic bomb.

Auergesellschaft

Since the plant was to be in the future Soviet zone of occupation and the Russian troops would get there before the Allies, General Leslie Groves, commander of the Manhattan Project, recommended to General George Marshall that the plant be destroyed by aerial bombardment, in order to deny its uranium production equipment to the Russians.

Charles A. Kraus

Later, he became professor of chemistry and director of the chemical laboratories at Brown University, and was a consultant to the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb.

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Dr. Warren had served on the Manhattan Project while on leave from his post at University of Rochester School of Medicine.

David Lasky

Lasky's contribution to the comic book anthology Two–Fisted Science (written by Jim Ottaviani) chronicles the life of physicist Richard Feynman during his time with the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Doomsday Clock

Its first representation was in 1947, when bulletin co-founder Hyman Goldsmith asked artist Martyl Langsdorf (wife of Manhattan Project research associate and Szilárd petition signatory Alexander Langsdorf, Jr.) to design a cover for the magazine's June 1947 issue.

Francis Perrin

In 1986 he stated publicly that in 1949 Israeli scientists were invited to the Saclay nuclear research facility, this cooperation leading to a joint effort including sharing of knowledge between French and Israeli scientists especially those with knowledge from the Manhattan Project.

Hans von Halban

In 1942, along with British and other European "refugee scientists", Halban was sent to Montreal as head of the research laboratories at the Montreal Laboratory, part of the nascent Manhattan Project.

Holy Sonnets

It is thought that theoretical physicist and Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), regarded as the "father of the Atomic Bomb", named the site of the first nuclear weapon test site "Trinity" after a phrase from Donne's Sonnet XIV.

Influence of Bhagavad Gita

J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist and director of the Manhattan Project, learned Sanskrit in 1933 and read the Bhagavad Gita in the original, citing it later as one of the most influential books to shape his philosophy of life.

Montreal Laboratory

While he maintained that he did not divulge any nuclear secrets to his previous boss (although he had discussed patent rights), Halban was not allowed to work or to leave North America for a year, by General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project.

Nuclear fusion

Research into fusion for military purposes began in the early 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project, but this was not accomplished until 1951 (see the Greenhouse Item nuclear test), and nuclear fusion on a large scale in an explosion was first carried out on November 1, 1952, in the Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb test.

Philip Morrison

San Francisco State University
Illinois
Manhattan Project
Cornell
MIT

Plowshares Movement

On July 28, 2012, three Plowshares activists, Sister Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, who compose the Transform Now Plowshares movement, breached security at the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear weapons facility Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, causing the government to temporarily shut down the weapons facility.

Robert Cornog

During World War II, Cornog designed magnetic equipment for ships and went to work on the Manhattan Project, successively at UC Berkeley, Princeton University and in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Rocket Ship Galileo

After World War II, three teenage boy rocket experimenters are recruited by one boy's uncle, Dr. Cargraves, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project, to refit a conventionally powered surplus "mail rocket".

Silverplate

This would have required much less modification, but Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., the director of the Manhattan Project, and General Henry H. Arnold, the Chief of United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), wished to use an American plane, if this was at all possible.

Stagg Field

The earliest Stagg Field is probably best remembered for its role in a landmark scientific achievement by Enrico Fermi during the Manhattan Project.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Others cover more serious material, including his work on the Manhattan Project (during which his first wife Arline Greenbaum died of tuberculosis) and his critique of the science education system in Brazil.

The Pacifist

Published near the beginning of the Cold War, "The Pacifist" satirizes the military-industrial complex (although the term would not come into wide use for another five years.) The involvement of civilian scientists in military projects was familiar to the reading public, notably the involvement of J. Robert Oppenheimer's team of nuclear scientists in the Manhattan Project, under the military leadership of General Leslie Groves.

Union Minière du Haut Katanga

At a meeting on 18 September 1942 between Edgar Sengier, head of UMHK, and United States General Kenneth Nichols of the Manhattan Project, Nichols purchased the 1500 tonnes of uranium (mostly mined at Shinkolobwe mine, near the town of Likasi) the project required.

Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station

The capital cost was $45 million against an estimated cost of $57 million, according to the engineering consultant Kenneth Nichols, who had been deputy to Groves on the Manhattan Project.