Herbert Anderson's Interview (1965)
Stephane Groueff: Dr. Anderson?
Herbert Anderson: Yes.
Groueff: Now we can talk?
Anderson: I guess so.
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.
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.
Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly from the Atomic Heritage Foundation. It is Friday, April 11, 2014, and I have with me William Lanouette who is going to be talking about Leo Szilard. Why don’t you start by actually saying your full name and spelling it?
Bill Lanouette: I’m William Lanouette, L-A-N-O-U-E-T-T-E.
Kelly: Tell us about Szilard. Who was he? What’s his background?
[Many thanks to Bill Curtis for recording and donating this interview to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.]
Mary Lou Curtis: When I got out of college, it was 1932 and a big Depression was on. Miami University, where I graduated from, only placed one teacher that year because jobs were so hard to find. I didn’t get a teaching job that first year, but I worked in the Miami University Library for I think maybe thirty cents an hour and managed to get through the year.
[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.]
S. L. Sanger: Hello. Dr. Teller?
Edward Teller: Yes.
[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 mispellings and other errors.]