National Museum of Nuclear Science & HistoryStephane Groueff: Interview with Mr. P. C. Keith, K-E-I-T-H, former head of Kellex Company during the war.
Percival Keith: So I decided I would accept the job of trying to build this plant at Oak Ridge. Groves came up from Washington, and he and I went out to dinner. It was a French restaurant, Miriliton.
Groueff: What was the name?
Stephane Groueff: So, you were in charge of recruiting for Hanford or generally for DuPont?
Phil Gardner: No, I had one section of it. The country was really split up into four parts at the time I became connected with it. That was in May of 1944 – four different people were sent out to head up recruitment in different sections. One was up on the Northeastern part, one was down in the Southwest. One was in here, and one was in the Chicago Area, that is right in the East here.
[We would like to thank Robert S. Norris, author of the definitive biography of General Leslie R. Groves, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man, for taking the time to read over these transcripts for misspellings and other errors.]
Stephane Groueff: Dr. Anderson?
Herbert Anderson: Yes.
Groueff: Now we can talk?
Anderson: I guess so.
Stephane Groueff: Where did you come from? Probably we’ll start chronologically and then—
Dr. Samuel K. Allison: I was born here in Chicago, just half a kilometer from where we’re sitting at this moment. I went to school at the public schools in the city of Chicago and entered the University of Chicago in 1917. I got my PhD in 1923, went away for six years, but have been here ever since. So, I’ve been here ever since 1929, 1930.
Groueff: Teaching or research?
Charney: Where shall I start?
Groueff: Tell me how you got involved in the whole project and your first meeting with all those people and where you came from. Start from the beginning.
Stephane Groueff: We said that the nickname of the General was “DNO.”
Grace Groves: DNO.
Groueff: And your children even now the grandchildren and yourself, call him DNO.
Groves: He's also known as Dick.
Groueff: Dick?
Groves: By his friends, yes.
Groueff: Why Dick?
Groves: You see his name is Richard, and that’s the nickname for Dick.
Groueff: Richard.
Philip Abelson: I went to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in the fall of 1935 as a graduate student in the Radiation Laboratory. I had had some background in chemistry. I hadn’t been there more than about six months before [Ernest] Lawrence, one day, suggested to me that I should look into the phenomena accompanying neutron irradiation of uranium.
Stephane Groueff: Interview with Dr. James Conant. Dr. James Conant, New York, October 11, 1965.
[We would like to thank Robert S. Norris, author of the definitive biography of General Leslie R. Groves, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man, for taking the time to read over these transcripts for misspellings and other errors.]
