The Manhattan Project

In partnership with the National Museum of Nuclear Science & HistoryNational Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Marshall Islands

Roger Stover

Roger Stover was born in Naperville, Illinois. He spent his first eighteen years there before going to Purdue for his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Stover later went on to receive a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering also from Purdue. He then taught physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology and at Gordon College in Pakistan.

Stover served in the U.S. Army for two years, doing work measuring radiation levels during tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands and the Nevada Test Site.

Roger Stover's Interview

Alexandra Levy: I’m Alexandra Levy with the Atomic Heritage Foundation. I’m here in Florida on December 28, 2017, with Roger Stover. My first question is for you to please say your name and spell it. 

Roger Stover: My name is Roger Stover, R-o-g-e-r, last name S-t-o-v-e-r.  

Levy: Can you tell us about when and where you born, and a little bit about your family growing up?

Harris Mayer's Interview

Nathaniel Weisenberg: My name is Nate Weisenberg. I’m here with Harris Mayer in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It’s October 11, 2017. My first question: if you could just say your name for the camera and spell it, please.

Harris Mayer: My name is Harris Mayer, H-a-r-r-i-s M-a-y-e-r.

Weisenberg: Thank you. I know you had a story that you wanted to begin with, so I will let you go ahead.

Harris Mayer

Harris Mayer is an American physicist. A student of both Edward Teller and Maria Goeppert-Mayer, he worked at Columbia University during the Manhattan Project. He moved to Los Alamos in 1947 to work at the Los Alamos laboratory, and his early work contributed to the development of the hydrogen bomb. In this interview, Mayer discusses his close friendships with other scientists and his work on the Operation Greenhouse nuclear tests. He shares stories about Teller, Frederick Reines, and Richard Feynman, and recalls attempting to mediate the conflict between Teller and Hans Bethe.

Richard Money's Interview

Willie Atencio: The first thing we need to know is, where were you born?

Dick Money: In Chicago.

Atencio: Okay, you were born in Chicago. What part of Chicago?

Money: South Side.

Atencio: South Side. Tell us a little bit about your parents.

Money: My father was a civil engineer. He had a company that built grain elevators. He was educated at Armour Institute, which later became Illinois Tech in Chicago. A wonderful man, of course.

Louis Hempelmann's Interview - Part 4

Louis Hempelmann:  I do not think the people who came later were ever as close as the people who were there at the beginning.

Martin Sherwin: Did most of the people who came later, were they junior people? That is, younger? [Enrico] Fermi came later.

Hempelmann: [George] Kistiakowsky came later.

Sherwin: He did? When you say “earlier” and “later,” what dates are you talking about?

Louis Hempelmann's Interview - Part 3

Martin Sherwin: What was the set-up at Los Alamos, in terms of your relationship to the director [J. Robert Oppenheimer] and how you operated?

Louis Hempelmann:  I was working directly under him. I started out with my wife as a half-time secretary, and the technician I brought with me from St. Louis, and Kitty worked for me.

Sherwin: What did Kitty do for you?

Hempelmann: Did blood counts.

Sherwin: Was she a good technician?

Louis Hempelmann's Interview - Part 2

Louis Hempelmann: He [J. Robert Oppenheimer] just told me what the situation was. He did not ask me, which is the same thing when he got sick because I was in the radiology department here and I knew something about it. He would call me up, tell me what he had done, and then say “What do you think of it?” By that time, the only thing I could say was, “That was fine.”

Louis Hempelmann Interview - Part 1

Martin Sherwin: Martin Sherwin, I am about to interview Dr. Hempelmann at Strong Memorial Hospital.

You know, simply from all of the Los Alamos records, but who told me you were at Strong? That was, I think, Dorothy McKibbin.

Louis Hempelmann:  Oh yeah.

Sherwin: No, she confirmed it. She said you were coming out to Santa Fe.

Hempelmann: Yeah.

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