Groves was born in Albany, New York. General Groves headed the Manhattan Project almost from its inception in 1942 until 1947, when atomic energy affairs were turned over to the newly created civilian Atomic Energy Commission. He was in charge of all phases of itÐscientific, technical and process development, construction, production, security and military intelligence of enemy activities, and planning for use of the bomb.
He retired from active duty on February 29, 1948, and became a Vice-President at the RAND corporation.
Otto Hahn
(1879-1968)
Otto Hahn was born in Frankfort am Main on March 8,1879, and received his education from Universities of Marburg and Munich. His initial work in radiochemistry was conducted at University College, London, in 1904. There he first discovered radiothorium while extracting radium from a sample of barium salt.
In 1911, he became a member of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. He eventually served as its director from 1928-1945 until the Institute was taken into Allied custody following World War II. In 1938, in collaboration with Fritz Strassmann, Hahn discovered that barium could be produced by bombarding uranium with neutrons. this discovery, brought about by the process of fission, earned Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1944, and led directly to the development of the atomic bomb. Hahn died on July 28, 1968.
Frederic Joliet-Curie
(d. 1958)
Working with his wife, Irene, he discovered artificial radioactivity in 1934. This discovery won them the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Their work led to Otto Hahn and Fritz StrassmannÕs discovery of uranium fission. In addition, their efforts determined the number of neutrons released, and the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. He died on August 14, 1958.
Irene Joliet-Curie
(1897-1956)
The daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, Irene was born in 1897. Along with her husband, Frederic, they were the first to produce artificial radioactivity by bombarding aluminum with alpha particles. This discovery won them the Nobel Prize in chemistry. This work led Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman to conduct experiments providing nuclear fission. She died in 1956.
Lise Meitner
(1878-1968)
Lise Meitner was born in 1878 in Austria. Working with radiochemist Otto Hahn, she laid the foundation for the discovery of nuclear fission of heavy nuclei. She was the head of the physics department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, until forced to flee from Nazi persecution. In 1966, she along with Hahn and Strassmann were awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize. She died on October 27, 1968.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
(d 1953)
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of passing nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union, were the first American civilians executed for espionage. EthelÕs brother, David Greenglass, who was an employee of the Los Alamos atomic bomb project, passed secrets to Julius and Ethel, who then funneled them to the Soviets. They were killed in the electric chair on June 19, 1953.
Fritz Strassmann
(1902-1980)
Born in 1902 in Boppard, German chemist Strassmann received his doctrate in 1929 from Technical University in Hannover. He worked with Otto Hahn on the problem of nuclear fission. He replaced Lise Meitner, who had to flee Nazi Germany. In 1938, Hahn and Strassmann conducted experiments which proved nuclear fission.
In 1966, he, along with Hahn and Meitner shared the Enrico Fermi Prize. From 1945 to 1953, he served as the director of the chemistry department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. He died in 1980.
Leo Szilard
(1898-1964)
A Hungarian physicist, he was best known for encouraging Albert Einstein to warn President Roosevelt about the atomic bomb. Szilard received his doctorate in physics in 1922. He later worked with Enrico Fermi at the University of ChicagoÕs Metallurgical Laboratory to construct the first nuclear reactor. By 1945, it was clear that the U.S. was planning to use the bomb against Japan. Szilard began a campaign against its use. He circulated petitions among the scientists demanding greater scientific input on the future use of atomic weapons. After the bombs were dropped, he continued to worked toward peaceful uses of atomic energy and international arms control.
Eugene Wigner
(1903-1995)
Eugene Wigner was born on November 17, 1903 in Budapest, Hungary. He worked with Enrico Fermi at the University of ChicagoÕs Metallurgical Laboratory on nuclear chain reactions. Wigner received the Enrico Fermi Prize in 1953. He also shared the 1963 Nobel Prize for physics with Jo Jensen and Marie Goeppert-Mayen, for his work in understanding the nucleus.
Ernest O. Lawrence
(1901-1958)
Born in Canton, South Dakota, E. O. Lawrence is best known as the inventor of the cyclotron in 1930. For this development, Lawrence won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1939. He received his PhD in physics from Yale University in 1925. In 1928, he joined the faculty at Berkeley, where we began working with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Lawrence was involved with the American atomic bomb project from the nearly the beginning. He was in charge of the electromagnetic separation work at Oak Ridge that provided the fissionable material.
In 1957, he was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award. Both the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were named in his honor.
Werner Heisenberg
(1901-1976)
Werner Heisenberg was born in W≈∏rzburg, Germany in 1901. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1932 for establishing the field of quantum mechanics. This discovery aided the Manhatten Project in determining the amount of fissionable material that would be needed to produce a chain reaction. Heisenberg is best known for his uncertainity princple. During in World War II, Heisenberg led the German effort at the Max Planck Institute to construct an atomic bomb. Due to several errors early in their investigation, the German effort was never close to developing an atomic weapon.
Stanislaw Ulam
(1909-1984)
Ulam was born in Lwow, Poland, where he recieved his PhD in mathematics. In 1935, he accepted an offer by fellow mathematician John von Neumann to work at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He, along with von Neumann worked in Edward TellerÕs group. His primary focus was on TellerÕs ÒSuperÓ bomb. In 1951, UlamÕs calculations proved that TellerÕs scheme for the ÒSuperÓ bomb to unworkable. Ulam developed the theoretical breakthrough that enabled the development of the hydrogen bomb in 1952.
Hans Bethe
(b. 1906)
Hans Bethe was born on July 2, 1906 in the Alsass region of Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Munich in 1928, but fled the European Continent as the Nazis began their rise to power in the 1930s. He eventually settled in the United States, and began a post as professor of physics at Cornell University in 1935.
It was at Cornell that Bethe first became interested in investigating the source of solar energy, and came upon the process of fusion. His work in this area eventually led him to Los Alamos, where he served as the chief of the theoretical division for the Atomic Bomb Project.
At the end of the Second World War, Bethe worked, along with Edward Teller, on the development of the hydrogen bomb. He was a member of the PresidentÕs Science Advisory Committee from 1956-1964, and in 1958 headed a presidential study of nuclear disarmament. He helped to negotiate the 1963 partial test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, and acted as an informal advisor to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.
In 1967 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. In his later years, Bethe became a passionate advocate against the international development of defensive nuclear systems. He retired from Cornell as a professor emeritus in 1975.
Neils Bohr
(1885-1962)
Neils Bohr was born in Copenhagen on October 7, 1885, and earned his doctorate at the University of Copenhagen in 1911. He is best known for his ground breaking work in atomic theory. His idea of atomic structure, based on Ernest RutherfordÕs nuclear model and Max PlanckÕs quantum theory, earned him the Nobel Prize in 1922.
He was forced to flee Denmark in 1943, after learning of a German plot to arrest him. Bohr spent the remaining war years in the United States, where he participated in the American atomic bomb project at Los Alamos.
After the war, Bohr spent the rest of his years in Denmark where he began work on the development of peaceful uses for atomic energy. In 1955 he organized the first Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. He died on November 18, 1962 in Copenhagen.
Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)
Any list of the greatest thinkers in history contains the name of the brilliant physicist Albert Einstein. His theories of relativity led to entirely new ways of thinking about time, space, matter, energy, and gravity. EinsteinÕs work led to such scientific advances as the control of atomic energy and to some of the investigations of space currently being made by astrophysicists.
Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879, of Jewish parents. He was a shy and curious child. He attended a Munich elementary school where he showed an interest in science and mathematics. He finished high school and technical college in Switzerland. At age 22 he became a Swiss citizen.
In 1902 Einstein became an examiner in the Swiss patent office at Bern. In 1905, at age 26, he published five major research papers in an important German physics journal. He received a doctorate for the first paper. Publication of the next four papers forever changed mankindÕs view of the universe.
Between 1909 and 1912 Einstein taught theoretical physics in Switzerland and Germany. He returned to Zurich to teach from 1912 to 1914. Worldwide fame came in 1919 when the Royal Society of London announced that predictions made in his general theory of relativity had been confirmed. Although he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for physics, the prize did not refer to his relativity theories, which were still considered to be controversial.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they denounced his ideas, seized this property, and burned his books. That year he moved to the United States. In 1940 he became an American citizen.
In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Einstein learned that two German chemists had split the uranium atom. Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist who lived in the United States, proposed that a chain-reaction splitting of uranium atoms could release enormous quantities of energy. In 1939 Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him that this scientific knowledge could lead to GermanyÕs developing an atomic bomb. He suggested that the United States prepare for its own atomic bomb research. Out of this effort came the Manhattan Project, in which the first two atomic bombs were developed in 1945. Einstein died in Princeton, NJ, on April 18, 1955.
Enrico Fermi
(1901-1954)
On Dec. 2, 1942, the first man-made and self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved, resulting in the controlled release of nuclear energy. This feat took place in a squash court beneath the stands of an unused football stadium at the University of Chicago. The scientist who led the achievement was Enrico Fermi. The first practical use of the ability to control nuclear energy was in the atom bombs that were used at the end of World War II.
Enrico Fermi was born on Sept. 29, 1901, in Rome. He was the youngest of three children. His father was a railroad worker, his mother a schoolteacher. At 17 Fermi entered the University of Pisa on a scholarship. He was soon teaching theoretical physics to his own physics instructor.
In 1922 he earned his doctorate in the subject, and after further study in Gottingen, Germany, and in Leiden, the Netherlands, he began teaching at the University of Rome. Here Fermi met Laura Capon, a science student at the university who became his wife in 1928. They had a daughter and a son. In 1934 Fermi worked out a theory of beta-ray disintegration in radioactivity. Soon he was experimenting with neutrons and learned to make about 40 chemical elements radioactive. For this work he won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938.
To escape fascism in Italy, the Fermi family immigrated to the United States after going to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize. Fermi taught at Columbia University in New York City and did research on uranium. He became a United States citizen in 1944.
On Dec. 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II. Early in 1942 Fermi transferred to the University of Chicago. In a squash court under the football stadium he developed a method of causing nuclear fission. With this method he and his group produced a chain reaction that released the explosive nuclear energy.
After the war Fermi continued as a University of Chicago professor. In 1954, he was given the first special Atomic Energy Commission award of 25, 000 dollars. Several days later, on November 28, he died of cancer in Chicago.
Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Fuchs, a British scientist in the theoretical division at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, had access to a wealth of top secret material, much of which he passed to the Russians. Fuchs was tried and convicted in Britain in the 1950s. Fuchs served 10 years of a 14 year sentence. He then emigrated to East Germany.
The Soviet atomic bomb project was greatly aided by the information given to them by Fuchs and later the Rosenbergs.
Andrei Sakharov
(1921-1989)
Andrei Sakharov was born in Moscow on May 21, 1921. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1942 and went on to receive his doctorate in physics from the P.N. Lebedev Institute in 1947 at the age of 26. A year later he conducted research, along with fellow Soviet physicist Igor Tamm, in controlled nuclear fusion. This work, conducted between the years 1948-56, eventually led to the creation of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb.
Following his 1961 protest against atmospheric testing of the hydrogen bomb, SakharovÕs activities became increasingly political in nature. In 1968 he authored an essay calling for drastic reductions in nuclear arms. In 1970 he founded the Committee for Human Rights. Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, but Soviet authorities would not permit him to travel to Norway to accept the award. By 1980, for his unrelenting criticism of Soviet policies, including the invasion of Afghanistan, Sakharov was sentenced to internal exile in Gorky.
In December 1986, Sakharov was allowed to return to Moscow, and was eventually elected to the new Soviet Legislature, holding one of 12 new posts reserved for members of the Academy of Sciences. He remained a tireless advocate for political reform and human rights until his death on December 14, 1989.
Ernest Rutherford
(1871-1937)
One of the great pioneers in nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford discovered radioactivity, explained the role of radioactive decay in the phenomenon of radioactivity, and proved that the positive electric charge in every atom is concentrated in a nucleus at the heart of the atom. Rutherford was also the first to transmute one chemical element into another by artificial means.
Ernest Rutherford was born near Nelson, New Zealand, on Aug. 30, 1871. His brilliance as a graduate student under Joseph J. Thomson won him a professorship of physics at McGill University in Montreal, Que., in 1898.
By 1902 Rutherford, in collaboration with Frederick Soddy, had succeeded in establishing a new branch of physics called radioactivity. He and Soddy published their findings on the properties of alpha and beta particles and on gamma-ray emissions during radioactive decay. Their findings included the chain of decay from uranium through lighter elements. For this work Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1908.
In 1907 Rutherford accepted a post at Manchester University in England. By 1911, after studying the deflection of alpha particles shot through gold foil, he had established the nuclear theory of the atom. One of his students, Niels Bohr, used RutherfordÕs model of the atom to describe the hydrogen spectrum in terms of the quantum theory. Another student, Henry G.J. Moseley, used RutherfordÕs model, BohrÕs theory, and his own X-ray diffraction studies to develop a new explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of atomic numbers.
In June of 1919, Rutherford announced his success in artificially disintegrating nitrogen into hydrogen and oxygen by alpha particle bombardment. Rutherford then spent several years directing the development of proton accelerators (atom smashers).
Knighted in 1914, Rutherford was raised to the peerage as the first Baron Rutherford of Nelson in 1931Ña barony that ceased to exist after his death. He died at Cambridge on October 19, 1937, and was buried at Westminster Abbey, in London.
I.I. Rabi
(1898-1988)
Isidor Isaac Rabi was born in Rymanov, Austria on July 29, 1898 and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1927. In 1930 Rabi conducted investigations into the nature of the force binding protons to atomic nuclei. This research eventually led to the creation of the molecular-beam magnetic-resonance detection method, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1944. Between the years of 1940-45 he was the associate director at the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyÕs radiation laboratory developinf microwave radar. He served on the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1946-56. Rabi died on January 11, 1988.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
(1904-1967)
The theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was director of the laboratory in Los Alamos, NM, where scientists working on the Manhattan Project in the mid-1940s developed the atomic bomb.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904. He graduated from Harvard University in 1925 and went to England to do research at Cambridge UniversityÕs Cavendish Laboratory. In 1927 he received his doctorate from Gottingen University in Germany, where he met other prominent physicists such as Niels Bohr and P.A.M. Dirac.
Upon his return to the United States, he became a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley and California Institute of Technology. In 1943 Oppenheimer selected the Los Alamos site for the laboratory. After the war he resigned is post, and from 1947 to 1966 he was the director of PrincetonÕs Institute for Advanced Study.
In 1954, during the period of anti-Communist hysteria promoted by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, the federal Personnel Security Board withdrew his military security clearance. Oppenheimer thus became the worldwide symbol of the scientist who becomes the victim of a witch-hunt while trying to solve the moral problems rising out of scientific discoveries. His clearance was reinstated by President Lyndon Johnson in 1963, and he was given the Enrico Fermi Award of the Atomic Energy Commission. On February 18, 1967, he died of throat cancer at Princeton.
