People of Los Alamos

Harry Daghlian was among the promising young scientists who came to work at Los Alamos as part of the Manhattan Project. Harotune Krikor Daghlian Jr. (1921-1945), known as Harry, was raised in Illinois, attended MIT, and had graduated from Purdue University. He had not yet earned his doctorate in physics when he joined Project Y. Daghlian was assigned to work with Otto Frisch’s Criticality Assembly Group. He helped transport the plutonium core to the Trinity Site.

On March 26, 1943, Dorothy McKibbin reported to work at 109 East Palace in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and learned that their employer was the secret Los Alamos Laboratory in the nearby mountains, part of the covert Manhattan Project. From her modest office, Dorothy became “gatekeeper” to Los Alamos since all civilian employees and many of the military personnel checked in through her office.

Although Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a very talented theoretical physicist and was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to nuclear and hydrogen weapons at the Los Alamos Laboratory, it was not science for which he is most remembered during and after the Manhattan Project. It was espionage.

The third article in a series of three explores Oppenheimer's life after the Manhattan Project, including his celebrity after the war, his security clearance revocation and blacklisting, and his final years of life.

Edward Teller is often referred to as the father of the hydrogen bomb. Prior to the hydrogen bomb’s creation in 1951, Teller worked for the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and was influential in urging President Roosevelt to create the project. Read more about Teller’s life and work at the link.

Often referred to as the "father of the atomic bomb", physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer directed atomic bomb development at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. The top-secret work at Los Alamos culminated in Trinity, the world's first successful nuclear test on July 16, 1945. Learn more about Oppenheimer's role in developing the atomic bomb at the link.

As part of the war effort Hans Bethe worked on a theory of armor penetration, with Edward Teller clarified shock-wave theory, and worked on radar at the Radiation Laboratory. When he was invited to Los Alamos as part of the Manhattan Project, he became head of the Theoretical Division. There he worked on aspects of implosion and radiation propagation, and, with Richard Feynman, calculated explosive yields.

In 1940 Isidor Rabi became associate director of the Rad Lab at MIT, working with radar. He strongly believed it was critical to the war effort, and when Robert Oppenheimer offered him the position of associate director at the Los Alamos site of the Manhattan Project, he turned it down. But like others including E.O. Lawrence and Niels Bohr, he visited Los Alamos often as a consultant. He was present at the Trinity Test.

On July 16, 1945, a loud, blinding explosion surprised New Mexicans around the Tularosa Basin. Trinity, the world’s first nuclear test, was top secret. Manhattan Project leaders did not inform people living nearby or downwind about the test or potential exposure to fallout.

US Army General Leslie Groves was appointed to lead the Manhattan Project in September, 1942. His responsibilities included overseeing the thousands of workers at Hanford's plutonium-production facilities, the Los Alamos bomb-design laboratory, and the uranium-enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge.