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Sir James Chadwick, was an English physicist who was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U.S. government to begin serious atom bomb research efforts. He was the head of the British team that worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He was knighted in Britain in 1945 for his achievements in physics.
Robert Serber was an American physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project. Serber's lectures explaining the basic principles and goals of the project were printed and supplied to all incoming scientific staff, and became known as The Los Alamos Primer. The New York Times called him "the intellectual midwife at the birth of the atomic bomb."
Robert Fox Bacher was an American nuclear physicist and one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project. Born in Loudonville, Ohio, Bacher obtained his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the University of Michigan, writing his 1930 doctoral thesis under the supervision of Samuel Goudsmit on the Zeeman effect of the hyperfine structure of atomic levels. After graduate work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he accepted a job at Columbia University. In 1935 he accepted an offer from Hans Bethe to work with him at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It was there that Bacher collaborated with Bethe on his book Nuclear Physics. A: Stationary States of Nuclei (1936), the first of three books that would become known as the "Bethe Bible".
Henry DeWolf "Harry" Smyth was an American physicist, diplomat, and bureaucrat. He played a number of key roles in the early development of nuclear energy, as a participant in the Manhattan Project, a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Arthur Jeffrey Dempster was a Canadian-American physicist best known for his work in mass spectrometry and his discovery in 1935 of the uranium isotope 235U.
Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Exactly what was given, and whether everyone on the list gave it, are still matters of some scholarly dispute. In some cases, some of the arrested suspects or government witnesses had given strong testimonies or confessions which they recanted later or said were fabricated. Their work constitutes the most publicly well-known and well-documented case of nuclear espionage in the history of nuclear weapons. At the same time, numerous nuclear scientists wanted to share the information with the world scientific community, but this proposal was firmly quashed by the United States government.
The Szilárd petition, drafted and circulated in July 1945 by scientist Leo Szilard, was signed by 70 scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. It asked President Harry S. Truman to inform Japan of the terms of surrender demanded by the allies, and allow Japan to either accept or refuse these terms, before America used atomic weapons. However, the petition never made it through the chain of command to President Truman. It was not declassified and made public until 1961.
Jesse Wakefield Beams was an American physicist at the University of Virginia.
Samuel Proctor Massie, Jr. was a chemist who studied a variety of chemicals that contributed towards the development of therapeutic drugs, including the chemistry of phenothiazine. As one of the African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project to develop atomic bombs in World War II Massie worked with uranium isotopes. Massie was named one of the top 75 distinguished contributors to chemistry in history by Chemical and Engineering News.
Donald Frederick Hornig was an American chemist, explosives expert, teacher and presidential science advisor. He served as president of Brown University from 1970 to 1976.
Lloyd Albert Quarterman was an American chemist working mainly with fluorine. During the Second World War he was one of the first six African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project.
John Harry Williams was a Canadian-American physicist. He was a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota. During World War II he worked on the Manhattan Project. He was a researcher at the Atomic Energy Commission and in 1959 he was appointed Atomic Energy Commissioner.
Robert Bigham Brode was an American physicist, who during World War II led the group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory that developed the fuses used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Martin Dewey Whitaker was an American physicist who was the first director of the Clinton Laboratories during World War II. He served as president of Lehigh University from 1946 until his death in 1960.
Joyce Clennam Stearns was an American physicist and an administrator on the Manhattan Project. Stearns resigned from the Manhattan Project in July 1945 to become dean of faculty at Washington University in St. Louis. Joyce also served as the director of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago from November 1944 through July 1945.
Benjamin Franklin Scott (1922–2000) was an American chemist and one of the African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project, working at the University of Chicago.
African-American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project held a small number of positions among the several hundred scientists and technicians involved. Nonetheless, African-American men and women made important contributions to the Manhattan Project during World War II. At the time, their work was shrouded in secrecy, intentionally compartmentalized and decontextualized so that almost no one knew the purpose or intended use of what they were doing.
Edwin R. Russell is an African American chemist, and one of the few African American to work on the Manhattan Project, researching the isolation and extraction of plutonium-239 from uranium at Chicago's Met Lab.
George Warren Reed Jr. (1920–2015) was an African American physicist known for his contributions to nuclear physics and his active involvement in civil rights activism.
Naomi Livesay was an American mathematician who contributed to the Manhattan Project. She received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Cornell College in Iowa and went on to receive a Ph.M. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin in 1939. Livesay worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos from 1944-1946 where she was assigned to calculate the predicted shockwave propulsion from an implosion type bomb.
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Jasper B. Jeffries". Atomic Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 2024-05-07.
- ↑ "The Unsung African American Scientists of the Manhattan Project". 9 August 2023.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Jasper Jeffries, Physicist born". African American Registry. Retrieved 2024-05-07.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Collins, Sibrina (2011-07-27). "Jasper Brown Jeffries (1912-1994)". Black Past. Retrieved 2024-05-07.
- 1 2 Crocker, Brittany. "15 African-Americans who were hidden heroes of the Manhattan Project". Knoxville News Sentinel. Retrieved 2024-05-07.