Wahl obtained a B.S. in Radiochemistry from Iowa State University in 1939. As a Ph.D. student, Wahl was part of the team—including Glenn Seaborg, Joseph W. Kennedy, and Edwin McMillan—that isolated and identified the element plutonium in 1941 (and later neptunium-238 & -239). It immediately became clear to the scientists working on the element that the isotope of plutonium with […]
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Thompson received his B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1934. Thompson began working for Standard Oil in California after his graduation, where he continued his friendship with Glenn Seaborg, whom he met his freshman year of high school (classmates). When Seaborg moved to the Chicago Met Lab in 1942, he asked Thompson to join him. While in […]
Born in Milwaukee, WI, in 1915, Perlman obtained a BS in chemistry (1936) and PhD in physiology (1940) from the University of California. During World War II, Perlman helped develop plutonium extraction methods at Berkeley before going to work at the Chicago Met Lab. He would also work on reactor development at Oak Ridge and at Hanford. The National Academy […]
Kamen was born on August 27, 1913, in Toronto, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He grew up in Chicago. Interested in classical music, he initially entered the University of Chicago as a music student before changing his major from music to chemistry. Although he gave up music as a career, Kamen continued to play the viola at a high […]
Born in Champaign, IL, in 1916, Kohman received his BS in chemistry from Harvard University in 1938 and a PhD shortly afterwards from the University of Wisconsin. Kohman then worked on the Manhattan project from 1942-1945 at the Chicago Met Lab and Hanford sites as an expert on radiochemistry and gamma ray sources. In 1954, he assisted in the discovery […]
Katz received his BS in chemistry from the College of the City of Detroit (now Wayne State University) and a PhD in 1942 from the University of Chicago. During the Manhattan project, Katz was a part of a team that studied ways to make the diffusion of U-235 to U-238. Katz also was part of the team tasked with separating […]
Coryell earned a Ph.D. at California Institute of Technology in 1935 as the student of Arthur A. Noyes. During the late 1930s he engaged in research on the structure of hemoglobin in association with Linus Pauling. He also taught at UCLA before 1942. In 1942 he accepted a job with the Manhattan Project, for which he was Chief of the […]
John Ela Willard was a graduate of Harvard University. Upon graduation he taught briefly at Haverford College before moving on to the University of Wisconsin where he spent the bulk of his academic career. His specialty was Hot Atom Chemistry and he was one of the scientists actively engaged upon the Manhattan Project where he studied various materials to determine […]
Born to Polish immigrants in Paterson, N.J., Bigeleisen earned an A.B. degree in chemistry from New York University in 1939. He earned an M.S. with Otto Redlich at Washington State University in 1941 and a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1943 with G. N. Lewis. Bigeleisen then joined the Manhattan Project at Columbia University, conducting experimental studies […]
On a visit to the University of Manchester, Joel Hildebrand, the director of UC Radiation Laboratory, invited Calvin to join the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. This made him the first non-Berkeley graduate hired by the chemistry department in +25 years. He invited Calvin to push forward in radioactive carbon research because “now was the time”. Calvin’s original […]