Rachel Bronson's Interview
Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly. It’s November 17, 2016. I have with me Rachel Bronson. My first question is to ask her to please say her name and spell it.
Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly. It’s November 17, 2016. I have with me Rachel Bronson. My first question is to ask her to please say her name and spell it.
Dan Robinson: I’m Dan Robinson recording this oral history for the Atomic Heritage Foundation on April 1st, 2016, here in Levittown, Pennsylvania.
Roslyn: My name is Roslyn Robinson. At times I use the initial “D,” because at one time there was another Roslyn Robinson and the mail was being mixed up. So, I’m either Roslyn D. Robinson or Roslyn Robinson.
Dan: What is your place and date of birth? Where were you born and what date?
Isabella Karle: Isabella Karle. I-S-A-B-E-L-L-A K-A-R-L-E
Cindy Kelly: Terrific. Could you tell us how you happened to become part of the Manhattan Project?
[Thanks to Ronald K. Smeltzer for donating the record "To Fermi with Love" to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.]
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—
[Thanks to Ronald K. Smeltzer for donating the record "To Fermi with Love" to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.]
Stephane Groueff: Now it is recording Dr. Langsdorf. If you can tell me in a few words how you got connected with the project and where you came from.
Alexander Langsdorf: Oh, in the first place, as soon as I got my PhD at MIT, I went out to Berkeley as a national research fellow and started to work in Ernest Lawrence’s lab doing nuclear physics, which was a brand new field then, just opening up in 1938.
Groueff: ’38.
Cindy Kelly: I'm Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation. This is Monday, February 16, 2015. We are in Pompano Beach, Florida with Dieter Gruen. I'm going to ask him to please say his name and spell it.
Dieter Gruen: I am Dieter Martin Gruen. D-I-E-T-E-R, M-A-R-T-I-N, G-R-U-E-N.
Kelly: Very good. Anyway, this is an interview about your life but with a focus on the Manhattan Project Experience. In that spirit can you tell us when and where you were born?
[Interviewed by Cynthia Kelly and Tom Zannes.]
Tell us your name.
Louis Turner: My name is Louis Turner. L-O-U-I-S T-U-R-N-E-R.
Richard Rhodes: There are two particular themes that I am interested in that I know you were involved with very much. Anything else that you remember that you would want to talk about would be wonderful. One is the developing of computing. Los Alamos made a major contribution to the development of computing in the world. The other has to do with the period around the invention of the two-stage thermonuclear weapon. Could you talk about your experience with those things?