Stephane Groueff: Mr. Hobbs, part two. So to go now to how you were contacted for the Manhattan Project.
J.C. Hobbs: You see, [Ludwig] Skog was one in the group and had me in on –
Groueff: And [William Francis] Gibbs.
Stephane Groueff: Hello. Colonel Matthias, if you can tell me the story of how the plutonium was shipped.
Colonel Franklin Matthias: Is this good enough.
Groueff: Yeah, it is good enough. The plutonium was shipped from Hanford to—?
Matthias: To Los Alamos.
Groueff: To Los Alamos.
Ted Rockwell: It's Theodore Rockwell, R - O - C - K - W - E - L - L. And what do you want to know?
Cindy Kelly: Okay. Tell us about how you happened to go to the Manhattan Project?
Philip Abelson: My name is Philip Abelson. I was the son of two Norwegian immigrants. My father was born north of the Arctic Circle, and my mother was born in middle Norway. I visited the birthplaces of both of them. They were very wonderful parents. I couldn’t have had better parents.
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?
Richard Rhodes: You said [Richard] Courant’s work added realism?
Ted Taylor: Yeah.
Rhodes: How so?
Taylor: By going over various tricks for dealing with the discontinuities, the singularities in the hydrodynamics. I had the impression that he was very helpful to people like Bob Richtmyer. I don’t know that Richard himself came up with anything all new and different, I don’t know. But he was very articulate and active.
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.
Stephane Groueff: [Enrico] Fermi was not considered as a foreigner?
William Sturm: Oh, no.
Groueff: There was no jealousy by the American top scientists?
Sturm: No, no, no, no. Science at this level is absolutely international. There is an international aspect.
Groueff: Did he speak good English?
Sturm: No, a heavy accent.
Groueff: Heavy accent but—
Stephane Groueff: Okay, now it’s recording. Dr. Foote, you started telling me from the beginning—
Frank G. Foote: Knowing nothing about the uranium, and this was supposed to be my new business; I’d go over to the library to find out what was known.
Groueff: In 1942?
Stephane Groueff: Recording Dr. Rudolph.
