Gilbert P. Church was a civil engineer and Project Manager at the Hanford site during the Manhattan Project.
Church joined the DuPont Company in 1933, where he helped organize construction projects in Delaware, New Jersey, and Lousiana. In 1939, Church was appointed assistant constuction superintendent for a smokeless powder plant in Memphis, Tennessee and later worked as Project Manager for Ordance Plants in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Rosemount, Minnesota.
In 1943, the DuPont Company selected Church to lead their Manhattan Project efforts. Church, along with Major Franklin T. Matthias and A.E.S. Hall, surveyed sites in Washington, Oregon, California, and California before choosing Hanford as the site for the world’s first full-scale nuclear production reactor. Church was assigned Project Manager of the Hanford site, where he helped supervise construction of project facilities and living quarters for site’s 50,000 workers.
After the war, Church continued to work for DuPont on various construction projects until his retirement in 1980.