Women of the Manhattan Project: Floy Agnes Lee

Floy Agnes Lee, seen in a digital rendering later in life, worked at the Los Alamos hematology lab.

US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Quick Facts

Significance:

Biologist at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project

Place of Birth:

Albuquerque, NM

Date of Birth:

July 23, 1922

Place of Death:

Santa Fe, NM

Date of Death:

March 6, 2018

Born in Albuquerque in 1922 to a German-American mother and a father who was a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, Floy Agnes Lee graduated from the University of New Mexico with a biology degree in 1945. During her college years, Lee worked to pay for flying lessons, with the dream of one day joining the Women’s Air Force.

Lee’s biology research at the university led her to be recruited to work in the hematology lab for the Manhattan Project in 1945. One of the few Pueblo people to work in the Los Alamos laboratory, Lee was responsible for collecting and examining blood samples from project scientists like Louis Slotin, who was exposed to a fatal dose of radiation in 1946. Lee was required to monitor the blood of specific scientists, such as Enrico Fermi, with whom she became good friends.

After the war, Lee enrolled in the University of Chicago’s PhD program in biology; she received her doctorate 14 years later and worked at several labs before returning to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she retired. Lee died in 2018 at the age of 95.