The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. The Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District; “Manhattan” gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. Along the way, the project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US $2 billion (about $27 billion in 2016 dollars). Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and to produce fissile material, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
It began with a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in August 1939, from a number of prominent physicists including Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard, which warned of Nazi Germany’s efforts to produce “extremely powerful bombs of a new type,” and urged the United States government to engage in research that would produce the weapon first. The Roosevelt Administration heeded the warning and on October 9, 1941, President Roosevelt approved a crash research program to build an atomic bomb. Four years later this program produced the world’s first atomic bombs. They were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945, instantly killing over 110,000 people and forcing the Japanese government to surrender. This display of deadly power, heretofore unmatched in the history of humankind, ushered in the nuclear age.
Two types of atomic bombs were developed concurrently during the war: a relatively simple gun-type fission weapon and a more complex implosion-type nuclear weapon. The Thin Man gun-type design proved impractical to use with plutonium so a simpler gun-type called Little Boy was developed that used uranium-235, an isotope that makes up only 0.7 percent of natural uranium. Chemically identical to the most common isotope, uranium-238, and with almost the same mass, it proved difficult to separate the two. Three methods were employed for uranium enrichment: electromagnetic, gaseous and thermal. Most of this work was performed at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
In parallel with the work on uranium was an effort to produce plutonium. After the feasibility of the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor was demonstrated in Chicago at the Metallurgical Laboratory, it designed the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge and the production reactors in Hanford, Washington, in which uranium was irradiated and transmuted into plutonium. The plutonium was then chemically separated from the uranium. The Fat Man implosion-type weapon was developed in a concerted design and development effort by the Los Alamos Laboratory.
The project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear weapon project. Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and documents, and rounded up German scientists. Despite the Manhattan Project’s tight security, Soviet atomic spies still penetrated the program.
The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb at the Trinity test, conducted at New Mexico’s Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on 16 July 1945. Little Boy and Fat Man bombs were used a month later in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. In the immediate postwar years, the Manhattan Project conducted weapons testing at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads, developed new weapons, promoted the development of the network of national laboratories, supported medical research into radiology and laid the foundations for the nuclear navy. It maintained control over American atomic weapons research and production until the formation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947.
The fact that any African American scientists and technicians were available to be involved in the Manhattan Project is remarkable given the enormous limitations placed on the education of blacks in the South before World War II. As late as 1933 only 54% of Southern white students were attending high school and only 18% of Southern blacks were there at a time when the overwhelming majority of African Americans lived in the states of the former Confederacy. Also given the huge differential in the laboratory equipment and prepared teaching staff, even those in segregated black high schools got scant exposure to any type of science training. Students at historically black colleges at the time usually faced similar challenges. Northern black students had greater opportunities for scientific training. Thanks to the Great Migration that began in World War I and brought tens of thousands of blacks out of the South to Northern cities, a number of Southern born individuals, such as
Thanks to the Great Migration that began in World War I and brought tens of thousands of blacks out of the South to Northern cities, a number of Southern born individuals, such as Moddie Daniel Taylor of Alabama and Jasper Brown Jeffries of North Carolina, were educated in Northern universities including the all important University of Chicago. Northern-born African Americans such as Harold Delaney and Lloyd Quarterman, both of Philadelphia, although attending racially segregated schools in their hometown, nonetheless had far more exposure to science training than their Southern-born counterparts.
Not all of the scientists and technicians, however, overcame huge educational disadvantages to earn the right to work on the Manhattan Project. Three black men, all of whom were classified as project scientists since they all had received Ph.D.’s before they were hired, had exceptionally stellar educations by any standard. Chemist William Knox and his brother, biologist Lawrence Knox, were from a New Bedford, Massachusetts family that valued education. Of the five siblings in that family, three men, William, Lawrence, and younger brother Clinton, who became a historian, all received Ph.D.’s before World War II. William earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Lawrence completed his doctorate at Harvard University. Mathematics prodigy, J. Ernest Wilkins, born into a prominent black Chicago family, entered the University of Chicago in 1936 at the age of thirteen and received his Ph.D. in 1942 at the age of 19. Although the black press described all of the African Americans working with the Manhattan Project as “white-coated scientists,” many were in fact technicians who nonetheless performed invaluable service in the development of the world’s first atomic weapons. Lloyd Quarterman, whose official title was
William earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Lawrence completed his doctorate at Harvard University. Mathematics prodigy, J. Ernest Wilkins, born into a prominent black Chicago family, entered the University of Chicago in 1936 at the age of thirteen and received his Ph.D. in 1942 at the age of 19. Although the black press described all of the African Americans working with the Manhattan Project as “white-coated scientists,” many were in fact technicians who nonetheless performed invaluable service in the development of the world’s first atomic weapons. Lloyd Quarterman, whose official title was junior chemist, worked with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago and Albert Einstein at Columbia University. Robert Johnson Omohundro was a mass spectroscopist which meant he identified and examined particles to calculate their mass. After World War II four technicians, Harold Delaney, Ralph Gardner-Chavis, Jasper Brown Jeffries, and George Warren Reed, Jr., all completed their doctorates.
The training and contacts they gained while working on the Manhattan Project no doubt proved exceedingly valuable as they completed their advanced degrees. When World War II ended the scientists and technicians moved on with their lives and work. Some became faculty at black colleges and universities in the South. Others pursued positions in private industry or returned to government employment. Edwin Roberts Russell did all three. He chaired the Division of Sciences at Allen University in South Carolina in the late 1940s and early 1950s, then worked for E.I. DuPont’s Savannah River Nuclear Laboratory which was a combined government-private industry project. Samuel Proctor Massie, one of the Manhattan Project scientists, served as President of North Carolina Central College (now North Carolina Central University) between 1962 and 1966 until his appointment that year by President Lyndon Baines Johnson as the first African-American faculty member at the U.S Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.
This week’s theads will highlight African-American scientists and technicians who were played a major role in the project.
**References from Wikipedia.org and BlackPast.org**