Manhattan Project- Who's Who

Here you will find biographies of six scientists that worked on the Manhattan project, including Neils Bohr, Joseph Carter, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feyman and, Robert Oppenheimer.

Neils Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1885. He went to the University of Copenhagen where he studied physics and other scientific subjects. While he was at the university he won the Gold medal of the Royal Danish Academy of sciences. In 1911 he received his Ph.D. in physics, and a year later he married Margaret Norland. Shortly after he developed the theory of the electron envelope, which explained the dimensions of an atom. This was important because he showed that the (nucleus) of an atom was actually 1/10,000 of the size that scientists had previously thought it was. He met Albert Einstein for the first time in 1920. One year later he founded and directed the Institute of Theoretic Physics. Bohr won the Nobel prize for physics in 1922 for his work at uncovering the mysteries of the atom. In 1933, as Adolph Hitler began to gain power, Bohr joined the "Danish Committee for The Support of Intellectual Refugees" so as to be protected from the Nazi regime. It was shortly after this that he made his first physics lecture in Russia. In 1939 he presented his famous Bohr-Wheeler theory of fission, he also explained that a fission chain reaction needed the rare U-235 isotope to be successful, which would be a valuable finding later during the Manhattan project.

In 1943 rejected an offer to work on the German atomic bomb and escaped to Sweden and then London eventually ending up in the United States to work on the Manhattan project. He was considered by many of his fellow scientists to be the sage of the Manhattan project. Bohr was not only concerned with creating the atomic bomb, he was also concerned with making people aware of the power and destruction that it could unleash. He published a "letter" to the United Nations in 1950 which asked them to help get rid of nuclear weapons on an international scale. He received the order of the Elephant, the highest Danish award. And in 1955, he helped create a Danish establishment for the constructive application of nuclear energy and power. He dedicated his remaining years to showing people that nuclear energy must be used in a positive and productive way, and in November 1962 he died.

Joseph Coleman Carter III, Nick Heinle's grandfather, was born in Versailles, Kentucky, on September 28, 1910. Son of a gentleman farmer, he spent his childhood hunting and fishing, where he learned to appreciate nature. He went to the United States Naval Academy at the age of 18, then went on to Columbia University were he received a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He was asked to join the Manhattan project while at Columbia, where he worked under the direction of General Leslie Groves. During this time he and other engineers built a pilot version of the atomic bomb. One year later he and his new wife, Mary Leaphart, moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he worked on refining isotopes of uranium, and started work on designing nuclear submarines for the government. After leaving Oak Ridge, he went on to work for Argonne, a government lab, there he worked on development of the nuclear breeder reactor, which was designed to reuse spent fuel. In 1976, he returned to his old Kentucky home, in Versailles, where he managed a farm and taught nuclear physics at the University of Kentucky. On June 26, 1992, he passed away after having a stroke.

Enrico Fermi was born September 29, 1901, in Rome, Italy. In 1915 his brother died, and he was pushed to pursue a career in science. He entered the Scuola Normale Superone at the University of Pisa, where received his Ph.D. magna cum laude in 1922. He taught math to students of chemistry and biology at the university of Rome in 1924. Two years later he got a special chair in modern physics and established a world renowned department. Later in 1928, he married Laura Capone. Then in 1930 he was invited to give a lecture at the university of Michigan (USA). He then split a uranium atom, for the first time, in Rome, 1934. For his work in physics he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1938. One of the most important things he did took place in an unused squash court at the University of Chicago: On December 2, 1942 he created a sustained a nuclear fission chain reaction, which was critical to creating an atomic bomb. Then in 1944, he joined the Manhattan Project where he acted as a consultant and overseer to the other scientists. In 1946 he was asked to teach at the University of Chicago's new Institute of Nuclear Studies and he took the job and left Los Alamos with his family. He passed away in November, 1954.

Richard Feyman was born May 11, 1918 in Queens New York, where he and his family lived in a modest middle-class neighborhood. By the age of fifteen, Feyman had already learned and mastered differential and integral calculus. He was accepted into MIT in 1936 and there he acceled in physics and other scientific subjects. He went on to Princeton as a Graduate but when the Manhattan project began he was asked, at the age of 24, to join the Los Alamos theoretical division. But before going he married his high school sweetheart, Arlene Greenbaum, who was sick with tuberculosis. When Feyman joined the project, the head of the theoretical division, Hans Bethe (pronounced bay-tah) became somewhat of a mentor to Feyman, and the two developed a long lasting friendship. Feyman and Bethe were a good team; Feyman was fast, but made mistakes, and Bethe was slower because he double checked everything. One of Feyman's talents was his speed in solving equations in his head, and finding ways to take large and complex equations and split them into smaller and more manageable pieces. This was very useful with many of the massive formulas used in the project, but even the split up equations were time consuming. Another one of Feyman's tasks was to find the amount of fissionable material it would take for the bomb to explode. Feyman was not just a theoretical physicist at Los Alamos, he was also the life of the party at many of the social events, where he joked and made many friends.

A Feyman Diagram
When his wife died (of tuberculosis) and the project ended in 1945, Feyman experienced a depression, but he quickly got his mind working on other things. He went to work on his thesis with Hans Bethe, to solve the mysteries of Quantum Electro Dynamics. To help solve the incredibly complex equations, which took weeks for a computer to solve, Feyman invented "Feyman Diagrams" for theoretical physics, for which he won a Nobel prize in 1965. In 1950, Feyman began teaching at the California Institute of Technology and in 1952 he remarried. He took up painting soon after, which never made a lot of money for him, but he didn't care because it was just a hobby. He stayed out the public eye for many years until in 1985 when he was asked to help find out why the challenger spaceship had exploded. He surprised NASA and the nation when he explained the it was the faulty O- rings on the ship that caused the problem. In 1988 he died from a long bout with cancer.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was born April 22, 1904 to a well-to-do Jewish family in an upper-class Manhattan apartment. His father had built up a prosperous garment business and his mother was a painter. He thrived on studying and he had few friends in high school, other than his little brother, 8 years younger than he. Oppenheimer went to Harvard where he completed a four year chemistry program in 3 years and graduated summa cum laude in 1925. He went on to the subatomic physics at the prestigious Cambridge University Cavendish Laboratory, but he didn't last long there because he was clumsy at the lab and he experienced a mental breakdown. He went on to better things at the German Gottigen University where theoretical physics dominated, and that was great for Oppy' (a nickname he picked up there). He got his Ph.D. in 1927 and his next goal was to bring what was then called "new physics" back to the United States.

Back in the states he taught at two schools; University of California at Berkeley and at the California Institute of Technology. He attracted many of the smartest students, who all adored him, they went so far as to follow him when he took his summer retreat. Then, on November 1, 1940 he married Kitty Harrison and started a family. As the United States began to get involved with W.W.II. in 1941, General Leslie Groves, chose Oppenheimer to direct the Manhattan project, and so it began.

Oppy' was involved with all parts of the project, from recruiting many of the scientists to helping engineers purify uranium. He had predicted that it would take four years to complete the bomb, but 27 months after the project began, it had produced a successful atomic bomb. He was at first very optimistic about the bomb, but when Edward Teller (his scientific rival) began work on the more powerful Hydrogen bomb, he decided that the UN should gain control of further nuclear development. He spoke out for this cause but the government didn't agree, so they took away his security access to the secrets of the atomic bomb and accused him of being sympathetic to the communists.

He continued to do interviews and give speeches, but the accusations had really hurt him. In 1963 he received the Fermi award. All the years of smoking finally got to Oppenheimer and in 1967, at 62 years of age, he died of throat cancer.


	Neils Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1885. He went to the University of Copenhagen where he studied physics and other scientific subjects. While he was at the university he won the Gold medal of the Royal Danish Academy of sciences. In 1911 he received his Ph.D. in physics, and a year later he married Margaret Norland. Shortly after he developed the theory of the electron envelope, which explained the dimensions of an atom. This was important because he showed that the (nucleus) of an atom was actually 1/10,000 of the size that scientists had previously thought it was. He met Albert Einstein for the first time in 1920. One year later he founded and directed the Institute of Theoretic Physics. Bohr won the Nobel prize for physics in 1922 for his work at uncovering the mysteries of the atom. In 1933, as Adolph Hitler began to gain power, Bohr joined the "Danish Committee for The Support of Intellectual Refugees" so as to be protected from the Nazi regime. It was shortly after this that he made his first physics lecture in Russia. In 1939 he presented his famous Bohr-Wheeler theory of fission, he also explained that a fission chain reaction needed the rare U-235 isotope to be successful, which would be a valuable finding later during the Manhattan project.
	In 1943 rejected an offer to work on the German atomic bomb and escaped to Sweden and then London eventually ending up in the United States to work on the Manhattan project. He was considered by many of his fellow scientists to be the sage of the Manhattan project. Bohr was not only concerned with creating the atomic bomb, he was also concerned with making people aware of the power and destruction that it could unleash. He published a "letter" to the United Nations in 1950 which asked them to help get rid of nuclear weapons on an international scale. He received the order of the Elephant, the highest Danish award. And in 1955, he helped create a Danish establishment for the constructive application of nuclear energy and power. He dedicated his remaining years to showing people that nuclear energy must be used in a positive and productive way, and in November 1962 he died.


	Richard Feyman was born May 11, 1918 in Queens New York, where he and his family lived in a modest middle-class neighborhood. By the age of fifteen, Feyman had already learned and mastered differential and integral calculus. He was accepted into MIT in 1936 and there he acceled in physics and other scientific subjects. He went on to Princeton as a Graduate but when the Manhattan project began he was asked, at the age of 24, to join the Los Alamos theoretical division. But before going he married his high school sweetheart, Arlene Greenbaum, who was sick with tuberculosis. When Feyman joined the project, the head of the theoretical division, Hans Bethe (pronounced bay-tah) became somewhat of a mentor to Feyman, and the two developed a long lasting friendship. Feyman and Bethe were a good team; Feyman was fast, but made mistakes, and Bethe was slower because he double checked everything. One of Feyman's talents was his speed in solving equations in his head, and finding ways to take large and complex equations and split them into smaller and more manageable pieces. This was very useful with many of the massive formulas used in the project, but even the split up equations were time consuming. Another one of Feyman's tasks was to find the amount of fissionable material it would take for the bomb to explode. Feyman was not just a theoretical physicist at Los Alamos, he was also the life of the party at many of the social events, where he joked and made many friends.
A Feyman Diagram	When his wife died (of tuberculosis) and the project ended in 1945, Feyman experienced a depression, but he quickly got his mind working on other things. He went to work on his thesis with Hans Bethe, to solve the mysteries of Quantum Electro Dynamics. To help solve the incredibly complex equations, which took weeks for a computer to solve, Feyman invented "Feyman Diagrams" for theoretical physics, for which he won a Nobel prize in 1965. In 1950, Feyman began teaching at the California Institute of Technology and in 1952 he remarried. He took up painting soon after, which never made a lot of money for him, but he didn't care because it was just a hobby. He stayed out the public eye for many years until in 1985 when he was asked to help find out why the challenger spaceship had exploded. He surprised NASA and the nation when he explained the it was the faulty O- rings on the ship that caused the problem. In 1988 he died from a long bout with cancer.


	J. Robert Oppenheimer was born April 22, 1904 to a well-to-do Jewish family in an upper-class Manhattan apartment. His father had built up a prosperous garment business and his mother was a painter. He thrived on studying and he had few friends in high school, other than his little brother, 8 years younger than he. Oppenheimer went to Harvard where he completed a four year chemistry program in 3 years and graduated summa cum laude in 1925. He went on to the subatomic physics at the prestigious Cambridge University Cavendish Laboratory, but he didn't last long there because he was clumsy at the lab and he experienced a mental breakdown. He went on to better things at the German Gottigen University where theoretical physics dominated, and that was great for Oppy' (a nickname he picked up there). He got his Ph.D. in 1927 and his next goal was to bring what was then called "new physics" back to the United States.
	Back in the states he taught at two schools; University of California at Berkeley and at the California Institute of Technology. He attracted many of the smartest students, who all adored him, they went so far as to follow him when he took his summer retreat. Then, on November 1, 1940 he married Kitty Harrison and started a family. As the United States began to get involved with W.W.II. in 1941, General Leslie Groves, chose Oppenheimer to direct the Manhattan project, and so it began.
	Oppy' was involved with all parts of the project, from recruiting many of the scientists to helping engineers purify uranium. He had predicted that it would take four years to complete the bomb, but 27 months after the project began, it had produced a successful atomic bomb. He was at first very optimistic about the bomb, but when Edward Teller (his scientific rival) began work on the more powerful Hydrogen bomb, he decided that the UN should gain control of further nuclear development. He spoke out for this cause but the government didn't agree, so they took away his security access to the secrets of the atomic bomb and accused him of being sympathetic to the communists. He continued to do interviews and give speeches, but the accusations had really hurt him. In 1963 he received the Fermi award. All the years of smoking finally got to Oppenheimer and in 1967, at 62 years of age, he died of throat cancer.