Cindy Kelly: My name is Cindy Kelly with the Atomic Heritage Foundation. It is January 8, 2016, and I am in New York City with Peter Lax. My first question for him is to say his name and spell it.
Peter Lax: Peter Lax, spelled L-A-X.
Kelly: Great, thank you. So I would love to have you talk, just a little bit anyway, about your childhood and your parents.
Stephane Groueff: [Enrico] Fermi had the characteristics of a real genius.
Colonel Franklin Matthias: Almost every time you would get in contact with him, something would come up that was impressive. Physically, he was a small man, unimpressive person, but he grew real large when he started talking about things he knew.
Groueff: Was he a friendly person?
Matthias: Yes, warm; very warm, very friendly, a real nice person.
Martin Sherwin: This is Martin Sherwin. I am on my way to interview Professor Robert Christy in his office at 423 Downs on the Caltech Campus in Pasadena, California, March 30th, 1983.
You were a student of his?
Robert Christy: I was a graduate student of [J. Robert] Oppenheimer’s from the fall of 1937 until the spring of 1941 when I got my degree, my PhD degree in theoretical physics in Berkeley.
Sherwin: What did you do your dissertation on?
Stephane Groueff: It is working. Mr. Stapleton, you were with security during the Hanford period, or you were already here with security in DuPont in Wilmington?
Newton Stapleton: I was in the security prior to Hanford. At the beginning of the war, DuPont got involved in building a plant for the French and British down at Memphis, Tennessee. Then as our country became more involved, we got involved in trying to please or satisfy the government from the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, the Coast Guard and everything.
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: 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: 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.
Martin Sherwin: This is an interview with Dorothy McKibbin in Santa Fe, July 20, 1979.
Dorothy McKibbin: Santa Fe?
Sherwin: It sure is, but it’s not going to be my last. I’m enjoying it thoroughly.
McKibbin: Great country.
Sherwin: It is. It’s just beautiful, and, of course, we’re having such fantastic weather now. If I could put this—
McKibbin: The most wonderful summer climate I have ever encountered, and I’ve been a lot of places.
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.
Robert Lamphere: One of the British newspapers speculated about allowing the FBI into see this guy [Klaus Fuchs], because we might actually use the third degree against him – which we thought was funny as hell. But right off the bat, he wasn’t sure he wanted to tell me anything, because of what we filed against ‒ particularly his sister, Kristel Heineman, and her husband, and others. So he and I fenced a little bit back and forth before we ever showed him the pictures or anything else. As to whether he was going to talk at all‒
