Early funding was meager, but in 1940, scientists at Columbia University and the University of California demonstrated the weapons potential of the isotope uranium-235 and the newly discovered element plutonium.
Los Alamos National Laboratory | Jet Propulsion Laboratory | Oak Ridge National Laboratory | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | Argonne National Laboratory | Brookhaven National Laboratory | Lincoln Laboratory | Applied Physics Laboratory | Cavendish Laboratory | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory | Mars Science Laboratory | Idaho National Laboratory | Ballistic Research Laboratory | United States Naval Research Laboratory | National Physical Laboratory | Marine Biological Laboratory | Air Force Research Laboratory | Rutherford Appleton Laboratory | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory | Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory | Naval Ordnance Laboratory | Clarendon Laboratory | Carlsberg Laboratory | The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar | Radiation Laboratory | Montreal Laboratory | European Molecular Biology Laboratory | United States Army Research Laboratory | SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory |
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.