Scientists from Cornell University played a major role in developing the technology that resulted in the first atomic bombs used in World War II. In turn, Cornell Physics professor Hans Bethe used the project as an opportunity to recruit young scientists to join the Cornell faculty after the war. [1] The following people worked on the Manhattan Project primarily in Los Alamos, New Mexico during World War II and either studied or taught at Cornell University before or after the War:
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as his work in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.
Hans Albrecht Bethe was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. For most of his career, Bethe was a professor at Cornell University.
Robert Rathbun Wilson was an American physicist known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, as a sculptor, and as an architect of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), where he was the first director from 1967 to 1978.
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".
John Henry Manley was an American physicist who worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer at the University of California, Berkeley before becoming a group leader during the Manhattan Project.
Anthony Philip French was a British physicist. At the time of his death he was professor emeritus of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alvin Cushman Graves was an American nuclear physicist who served at the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory and the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. After the war, he became the head of the J (Test) Division at Los Alamos and was director or assistant director of numerous nuclear weapons tests during the 1940s and 1950s. Graves was severely injured in the 1946 laboratory criticality accident in Los Alamos that killed Louis Slotin, but recovered.
Paul Olum was an American mathematician, professor of mathematics, and university administrator.
Elda Emma Anderson was an American physicist and health researcher. During World War II, she worked on the Manhattan Project at Princeton University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she prepared the first sample of pure uranium-235 at the laboratory. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, she became professor of physics at Milwaukee-Downer College in 1929. After the war, she became interested in health physics. She worked in the Health Physics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and established the professional certification agency known as the American Board of Health Physics.
Charlotte Serber was an American journalist, statistician and librarian. She was the librarian of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, and the laboratory's only female group leader. After the war she attempted to secure a position as a librarian at the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, but was rejected for lack of a security clearance; the likely reason was due to her political views. She later became a production assistant for the Broadway Theatre, and an interviewer for Louis Harris.
Myrtle Claire Bachelder was an American chemist and Women's Army Corps officer, who is noted for her secret work on the Manhattan Project atomic bomb program, and for the development of techniques in the chemistry of metals.
Katharine "Kay" Way was an American physicist best known for her work on the Nuclear Data Project. During World War II, she worked for the Manhattan Project at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago. She became an adjunct professor at Duke University in 1968.
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.
Julius Ashkin was a leader in experimental and theoretical physics known for furthering the evolution of particle physics from nuclear physics. As a theoretical physicist he made contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics, solid state physics, nuclear physics, and elementary particle physics. As an experimental physicist his main contributions concerned the passage of certain particles through solid matter and their subsequent decay. He was recognized for the quality of his research and teaching.
Elizabeth Riddle Graves was a pioneer in the physics of neutrons and the detection and measurement of fast neutrons. During World War II, she worked in the Metallurgical Laboratory and at the Los Alamos Laboratory, becoming a group leader there after the war.
Jane Hamilton Hall was an American physicist. During World War II she worked on the Manhattan Project. After the war she remained at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she oversaw the construction and start up of the Clementine nuclear reactor. She became assistant director of the laboratory in 1958. She was secretary of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1956 until 1959, and was a member of the committee from 1966 to 1972.
Natasha Goldowski Renner was a Moscow-born physicist and educator. She worked on the Manhattan Project, and later taught at Princeton University, Black Mountain College and Alfred University.
Ruth Hege Howes is an American nuclear physicist, expert on nuclear weapons, and historian of science, known for her books on women in physics.
Cynthia Hall was an American nuclear scientist and expert in poisons. She worked on the Manhattan Project at the Argonne National Laboratory, where she was one of the few female African American scientists assigned to the project.
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