The Manhattan Project

Cold War

Lee DuBridge's Interview - Part 1

Martin Sherwin: Today is March 30, 1983. I am at the CalTech campus and I am going to interview President Emeritus Lee DuBridge at his home in Pasadena.

Lee DuBridge: But we were on many things together and so we saw a good deal of each other. I visited him [J. Robert Oppenheimer] at his home in Princeton a number of times. We had meetings there and we would drop in for social visits and so on.

Sherwin: I would like to sort of try to bore in on some of the points.

Siegfried Hecker's Interview - Part 1

Richard Rhodes: So what I thought we might do since you just came back from – was this work related to the Russian collaboration?

Siegfried Hecker: Yes.

Rhodes: Then maybe we should debrief you about that first before we go back and do the earlier part of the story. Does that make sense to you?

Hecker: Well, I do not know how you do these things. I am completely in your hands. Whatever you think makes sense.

Jack Keen's Interview

Jack Keen: My father was an engineering draftsman at Hanford. I was—depending on what the months were—probably three or four years old.

Richard Rhodes: When you went there?

Keen: Right, when I lived there in one of those big, duplex houses. My mother, father and I lived in those duplexes for a time when I was a little kid.

Rhodes: What was his name?

Keen: His name was Lester Orlan, O-R-L-A-N, Keen, K-E-E-N.

Rhodes: And what was your mother’s name?

Robert Lamphere's Interview - Part 3

Richard Rhodes: I really am going to have to go through and revise the Perseus discussion, I think.

Robert Lamphere: It’s got Lona [Cohen] and the tissue thing. I think it became a story that she told. But who’s to know?

I just found that Greenglass’s information on implosion was the first news the Soviets had of it. I just found that fascinating because I learned something.

Rhodes: It’s probably the reason they were willing to cross the two nets.

Ruth Kerr Jakoby's Interview

Ruth Kerr Jakoby: My name is Dr. Ruth Kerr Jakoby. J-A-K-O-B-Y. I was born September 2, 1929. I am eighty-five years old. On September 2, I will be eighty-six.

Alex Wellerstein: My birthday is September 5, so we can both be Virgos together. Where were you born?

Jakoby: Palo Alto, California.

Wellerstein: You said you have a doctorate? What is your field in?

Jakoby: Neurosurgery. 

Wellerstein: Oh, wow!

Robert Lamphere's Interview - Part 2

Robert Lamphere: They said that he [Klaus Fuchs] annoyed some of the people because he wanted to keep certain [inaudible]. That’s a little point of irony. 

Richard Rhodes: Although, again, there was one guy who later thought, “Well, maybe he was pushing to find out what was the most valuable information.” Which I hadn’t thought of until I saw that comment.

Lamphere: I did not remember that at all. Don’t remember covering it in my interview.

Marshall Rosenbluth's Interview

Richard Rhodes: How did you get involved in the program?

Marshall Rosenbluth: Well, you can probably guess. I’ve already told you that I was a student of [Edward] Teller’s. I was in the Navy during the war and then went back to the University of Chicago where my parents were living, to graduate school, and became a student of Teller’s. I’m not quite sure exactly how. He was a professor in one of my courses.

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