During the Manhattan Project, scientists and their families blew off steam with creative Halloween parties. In her interview, Jane Yantis recalled how preparations for her Halloween party at Oak Ridge did not go as planned: "The boys picked up fresh apple cider for our Halloween party and stored it in our pantry closet. About four o'clock in the morning just days before the party, we heard "Bam, bam, bam!" The cider had fermented and blew up! We hadn't realized there were heat ducts in the closet because we hadn't had the heat on. We had to buy more fresh apple cider for Halloween."

 
In This Issue 
MPParkManhattan Project Park Signing Ceremony
While the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Act became law on December 21, 2014, the Act requires that the two Departments reach an agreement within a year of enactment on their respective roles in implementing the new park. At that time, the park will be officially established.

Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz and Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell will sign a Memorandum of Agreement on Tuesday, November 10, 2015 in Washington, DC. Atomic Heritage Foundation staff will be there along with representatives of local Manhattan Project communities and nonprofit partners who worked together to create the park. 

We all look forward to celebrating the new park and will send a special newsletter after the signing ceremony! 
FermiManhattan Project Spotlight: Enrico Fermi
Of all the scientific luminaries who worked on the Manhattan Project, Enrico Fermi was among the most distinguished. He was present at many of the pivotal moments in building the atomic bomb. A gifted teacher and a master of both theoretical and experimental physics, he seemed to be infallible to his followers, who nicknamed him "the Pope."

Recently, collector Ronald K. Smeltzer provided the Atomic Heritage Foundation with a copy of "To Fermi with Love," a radio documentary produced by Argonne National Laboratory in 1971. You can now listen to the full program - Parts One, Two, Three, and Four - on our "Voices of the Manhattan Project" website.

The program contains recollections from some of Enrico Fermi's closest friends and colleagues, as well as remarkable recordings of Fermi himself. In "To Fermi with Love," we gain not only a fuller appreciation of Fermi's scientific contributions, but also an understanding of his distinctive traits: honesty, simplicity, and a relentless work ethic. "Fermi, of course, was outstanding. He just went along his even way, thinking of science and science only," recalled Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves.

To learn more about Enrico Fermi's life and accomplishments, you can listen to the full audio of To Fermi with Love on the Voices of the Manhattan Project website. For the full Manhattan Project Spotlight article on Fermi, please click here.

MPVeterans
MP Veterans Reunion Video Online
Manhattan Project veterans at the reunion
On June 2, 2015 Manhattan Project veterans and their families gathered at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Manhattan Project. Nearly twenty veterans from across the country participated in the reunion and shared their stories.

After opening remarks by Atomic Heritage Foundation President Cindy Kelly, veterans who worked at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, New York, Chicago, and Hanford took the stage. They explained how they joined the project and detailed their duties at the top-secret sites. Benjamin Bederson described the role of the Special Engineer Detachment at Los Alamos: "There were senior physicists...and then there were the assistants like myself and many others, who were the 'hands' of the senior physicists. Sort of like a graduate school!"

Video from the reunion is now available on AHF's YouTube channel. Please note that due to acoustics in the auditorium, you may need to turn up the volume on your computer to hear the veterans well.

On June 3, 2015 AHF hosted a symposium on the Manhattan Project at the Carnegie. The event included panel discussions on the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, Manhattan Project innovations, the role of women on the project, and atomic espionage. We will post video from the symposium in the coming weeks.

KeyDocsNew Key Documents Section on AHF Website
We are pleased to announce the addition of a Key Documents section to the Atomic Heritage Foundation website. Visitors may now access the original content of various primary and secondary sources relating to the Manhattan Project and the subsequent development of nuclear weapons following World War II.

A few highlights of the new Key Documents section include the Einstein-Szilard Letter to FDR, which was written to the President in 1939 to promote the creation of a program in the United States to further the study of atomic weapons. Einstein noted in the letter that due to breakthrough studies of scientists such as Szilard in the 1930s, "extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed," adding that "a single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory."

Other key documents chronicle significant events in the development of nuclear weapons after World War II, including Niels Bohr's open letter to the United Nations in 1950 and President Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace speech to the United Nations. We will continue to add more essential documents from the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Age in the coming months.

Manhattan"Manhattan": Fact Vs. Fiction
Season two of "Manhattan" on WGN America started with a bang. In the opening scene of the premiere, the show flashes forward to the morning of the Trinity test, an indication of where the season is heading. The show then returns to summer of 1944, where change is afoot at Los Alamos.

In the first three episodes, "Manhattan" continues to emphasize the security situation at Los Alamos and the military's fear that spies could infiltrate the project. During the Manhattan Project, General Leslie R. Groves ordered that scientists and workers be told information on a need-to-know basis. However, J. Robert Oppenheimer resisted Groves. In an interview in 1965, Oppenheimer recalled that in his very first meeting with Groves he explained, "'This thing will never get on the rails unless there is a place where people can talk to each other and work together on the problems of the bomb. And this could be at Oak Ridge, it could be some California desert, but someplace, there has got to be a place where people are free to discuss what they know and what they do not know and to find out what they can.' And that made an impression on him."

"Manhattan" continues to be a mix of fact and fiction. In the third episode, Albert Einstein briefly is introduced, and his famous letter is mentioned. In the show, it is Frank Winter, not Leo Szilard with his Hungarian friends Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, who prevailed on Einstein to write it. 

On the other hand, "Manhattan" often gets surprising details right. For example, the third episode introduces a counterpart to reporter William Laurence of the NY Times who was allowed exclusive access to the project. When we first meet the reporter, he is wearing a thick, printed tie much like the one Laurence is wearing in the photo right.

While "Manhattan" takes liberties with the overall story of the Manhattan Project, especially the security situation, its attention to detail makes it interesting to watch. Historian Alex Wellerstein, the historical consultant on the show, explains, "As a historian, I have enjoyed watching the show because I can see lots of very subtle references to things that did actually happen, and I find that fun, as opposed to irritating."

AHF staff are  live-tweeting each episode of the show, which airs on Tuesdays at 9 PM EST. We are also writing recaps of each episode. To read the recaps of the first season, please click here; for the second season, click here

VoicesMP"Voices of the Manhattan Project"
Here are some recent additions to our Voices of the Manhattan Project website

Charles Critchfield was a mathematical physicist assigned to work on the development of gun-type fission weapons, and eventually implosion-type weapons, at Los Alamos. He returned to Los Alamos in 1952 to work on the development of the hydrogen bomb. In this interview, Critchfield explores the personalities of his fellow Manhattan Project scientists, including Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Niels Bohr, as well as their personal and professional conflicts. He discusses the difficulties he faced first in the design of the atomic bomb, then in the design of the hydrogen bomb, especially regarding the Initiator.

Frank G. Foote and James F. Schumar were metallurgists who worked on the Manhattan Project. Foote worked in metallurgy at the Metallurgical Lab at the University of Chicago, while Schumar developed procedures for cladding metallic uranium fuel rods with aluminum for Hanford's B Reactor and Chicago Pile-3. They discuss the challenges of working with uranium metallurgy, from safety issues to the strange properties of uranium metal. They explain their involvement in designing the slugs used in early nuclear reactors. They also explain how they designed a method to extrude and machine uranium.


FBI agent Robert Lamphere supervised many investigations of Soviet spies during the Cold War. His early espionage cases focused on those who attempted to infiltrate the Manhattan Project, including David Greenglass, Harry Gold, and the Rosenbergs. In this interview, he recalls his interrogation of Klaus Fuchs in London, as well as his impressions of Fuchs and Gold. Lamphere also discusses the network of spies living in the US, their motivations, and the nature of the commands that they received from Moscow.

Mary Rockwell was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. She had just graduated from high school when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in late 1941. After working for the Tennessee Valley Authority for a short period, she was hired as a secretary at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, TN. In this interview, Mary describes life at Oak Ridge during the war and meeting her future husband Ted, who just graduated from Princeton and was working as an engineer at the Y-12 plant. Ted and Mary were married at the Chapel-on-the-Hill in Oak Ridge.



Marshall Rosenbluth was an American physicist who worked in the theoretical division at Los Alamos from 1950 to 1956. In this interview, Rosenbluth addresses the theoretical issues involved in designing both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. He discusses how the pressure to create a nuclear bomb before the Soviet Union affected work in the laboratory, especially in performing and checking calculations. Rosenbluth also recounts his experiences during the nuclear weapons tests at Los Alamos and Bikini Atoll. He recalls the roles of top scientists, like Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Enrico Fermi, and Carson Mark, in the building of the hydrogen bomb. He also explains how funding and other external factors affected the hydrogen bomb's design.

Andrew Hanson and Henry Frisch: Andrew Hanson (right) is the son of Alfred Hanson and Henry Frisch (left) is the son of David Frisch. Both were born at "P.O. Box 1663" during the war and delivered by Dr. James F. Nolan, a radiologist and obstetric gynecologist. Nolan ran the hospital at Los Alamos and escorted the core U-235 material for Little Boy to Tinian Island. James L. Nolan, Jr., Nolan's grandson, is in the middle.

Alfred Hanson and David Frisch were both physicists who worked at Los Alamos using the Van de Graaff generator to measure neutron cross sections in plutonium. In this interview with Robert S. Norris, Frisch and Hanson discuss their fathers' work including on the Trinity Test and relay anecdotes about life at Los Alamos. Hanson remembers a story about his father accidentally vaporizing the world's supply of metallic plutonium. Frisch and Hanson also recall talking to the actors in the opera "Doctor Atomic" about the people they portrayed. The pair also talk about the source of plutonium and a third bomb on Tinian.

David R. Rudolph was an administrator in charge of inventory at the Chicago Met Lab. In his interview, he discusses how he was one of the few individuals to be present at both the startup of Chicago Pile-1 and the Trinity test. Rudolph recalls the process of reactor construction, along with the disassembly of CP-1 for the construction of CP-2. He explains the importance of inventory control when it came to the uranium and graphite blocks used in CP-1, and how he helped discover that a section had not be stacked with enough blocks.

Thanks to all the Manhattan Project veterans and their families who stay in touch with us. Please let us know how we can serve you better and consider making a donation to support our efforts. Thank you!

Sincerely, 
sig
President
Atomic Heritage Foundation 
Like us on FacebookFollow us on Twitter   View our videos on YouTube   
Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved.