Sign up now to attend our events commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Manhattan Project on June 2-3, 2015 in Washington, DC. A reunion and reception for Manhattan Project veterans and their families will be held on Tuesday, June 2 and a symposium will be held on Wednesday, June 3, 2015. All events will be held at the Carnegie Institution for Science at 1530 P St. NW, Washington, DC 20005. A number of Manhattan Project veterans and children of veterans have already registered. It should be a wonderful event, and we hope to see you there! Visit our website to learn more.

 

 

We are sad to report the passing of two good friends in March. On March 11, Evelyne Litz, who worked on the Manhattan Project at Chicago and Los Alamos, passed away at age 93. Her husband, Larry, passed away at the age of 92 on October 4, 2014. On March 19, Colleen Black, a veteran of the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge, died at age 89.

 

Larry and Evelyne Litz with AHF Program Director Alexandra Levy

Evelyne and Larry met in college. After World War II broke out, they were hired to work on the Manhattan Project. Larry worked on the Chicago Pile-1 and plutonium at Chicago, while Evelyne worked in health physics. Later they were transferred to Los Alamos, where Larry continued to work in plutonium. Evelyne worked in the library, and had her first daughter while at Los Alamos. 

 

The two of them were the first people to ever see metallic plutonium. Larry cast a third plutonium core in 24 hours to be used in case Japan still refused to surrender after the bombing of Nagasaki. This core was not used in World War II but later became known as the demon core.

 

Evelyne grew to love Los Alamos and its close-knit community. She recalled, "When we left Los Alamos it was towards sunset, and I cried. I cried because it had been a wonderful experience. When I first went up there I thought, "This is so barren." When I left I felt entirely different." To read more about Evelyne and Larry, please click here. Watch interviews with Evelyne and Larry on the "Voices of the Manhattan Project" website.

 

Colleen Black with AHF President Cindy Kelly and author Denise Kiernan

 

Colleen was a veteran of the Manhattan Project who loved to share her story. She was one of the women author Denise Kiernan profiled in her bestselling The Girls of Atomic City. She was always ready to contribute by leading a tour, speaking on a panel or answering students' questions about the Manhattan Project.

 

When Colleen's brother was drafted into the Army in 1942, she and her family decided to move to Oak Ridge to contribute to the war effort. Black's family joined 13,000 other workers and their families in Happy Valley, the construction camp for the mile-long K-25 gaseous diffusion plant. Black worked in the leak-testing department, ensuring the pipes carrying volatile uranium hexafluoride gas were hermetically sealed. After the war, Colleen (nee Rowan) married Clifford Black, a member of the Special Engineer Detachment during the Manhattan Project, and stayed in Oak Ridge.

 

The Atomic Heritage Foundation recorded two interviews with Colleen, which can be watched on our "Voices of the Manhattan Project" website here and here. Colleen explained, "I am proud to have been a part of the Manhattan Project. That is why we want to get a National Park." For more on Colleen, click here.

 

 

Recent Additions to "Voices of the Manhattan Project"

 

Eugene Wigner was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and mathematician and 1963 Nobel Prize winner in Physics. During the Manhattan Project, Wigner led a group responsible for the design of Hanford's B Reactor. In this interview, Wigner discusses his upbringing and education. He elaborates on his involvement with Einstein's letter of August 1939 urging President Franklin Roosevelt to begin work on an atomic bomb. Wigner also discusses the personalities of Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, and other scientists.

 

Dieter Gruen joined the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge in September of 1944, shortly after his graduation from Northwestern University. His work primarily focused on the chemical problems related to the separation of uranium isotopes. Immediately after the war, he helped form Oak Ridge Scientists and Engineers, a group dedicated to preventing the future use of nuclear weapons in war. In this interview, Gruen discusses the secrecy related to the project, the relatively lax safety standards of the period, and the differences between government support for science in the 1950s and government support today.

 

Lew Kowarski Part 1: Lew Kowarski was a Russian-born French physicist who helped discover that neutrons were emitted in the fission of uranium-235 in the 1930s, setting the groundwork for the use of nuclear chain reactions in the design of the atomic bomb. After World War II, Kowarski supervised the first French nuclear reactors and joined the staff of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in 1953. 

 

John Mench was assigned to the Special Engineer Detachment at Los Alamos where he worked as a pattern maker, creating wooden casts for metal work at the site's foundry. Mench discusses everything from housing and recreation to security and secrecy. He was a gifted actor and directed numerous plays at the Los Alamos Little Theater.

 

 

Seth Wheatley worked on the Beta calutrons at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project. He talks about African-American segregation, an often forgotten aspect of life in the city during the project. He discusses worker safety at Y-12 and raising a baby in the secret city of Oak Ridge.

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Yalman was a member of the Special Engineer Detachment and worked on polonium separation at the top-secret laboratories in Dayton, Ohio during the Manhattan Project. In this interview, Yalman discusses his undergraduate work at Harvard University and how he became part of the Manhattan Project. He elaborates on the degree of secrecy at Dayton, stressing the separation of the four units there and how no one talked about their work. Yalman also describes his personal life, the scientists he worked with, how he met his wife, and his work after the war.