Ted Hall: Atomic Spy in the Manhattan Project

by Martha Hutchens

MishaAbesadze, Deposit Photos

Like so many others in the Manhattan Project, Ted Hall was a genius. Like three others--that we know of—he was a Soviet Spy.

At 16, Ted transferred to Harvard as a junior, having already completed two years of college. He was also already active in communist organizations and following the battle between Germany and the Soviet Union closely. In his second year, he was assigned to room with Saville Sax, who would become a lifelong friend and his co-conspirator in spying on the Manhattan Project.

At 18, Ted Hall and his other roommate Roy Glauber were each called to a secretive meeting. Merrill Hardwick Trytten recruited promising young scientists from across the country to work on the Manhattan Project. Of course, he told the young men nothing about the project other than “it was important work which needed more hands.” Later, Sax overheard Glauber and Ted speculating about the project. He mentioned to Ted that “if this (the project) turns out to be a weapon that is really awful, wat you should do about it is tell the Russians.”

image by Martha Hutchens

Ted arrived in New Mexico in January 1944. He was 18. When he arrived at Los Alamos, he received a coveted white badge, which meant that no area of questioning was closed to him. He was assigned to learn about the properties of uranium, and eventually worked on determining the amount of uranium needed for a critical mass.

He was also well aware of the problems the Manhattan Project had run into in using Plutonium in an atomic bomb. Uranium occurs in multiple isotopes, but only U-235 can be used in a chain reaction. Separating isotopes is a daunting task, because they are chemically identical. This separation process was developed and performed at Oak Ridge in Tennessee. To give an idea of the difficulty, it is estimated that 10% of the total amount of electricity used by all of the United States when to this project while it was active.

frankie_s, Deposit Photos

Plutonium is a man-made element. It was discovered in 1940, and during most of the Manhattan Project, the scientists had mere micrograms of the element to determine its properties. In the summer of 1944, scientists realized that the simple design of the Uranium bomb could not be used for plutonium. Ted Hall knew this.

Hall spent a good bit time worrying about the implications of the United States having a monopoly on nuclear weapons. On October 15, 1944, he received leave and traveled to New York, ostensibly to visit his parents. In fact, he planned to contact the Soviets.

During his visit to New York City, he met with his college friend Saville Sax. They discussed several ways for Ted to get his information to the Soviets. First, Sax contacted Artkino, a branch of Soviet cultural propaganda. His story about his teen-aged super scientist buddy who wanted to share top secret information was met with skepticism, to say the least. Ted approached a Soviet trade company and got only a marginally warmer reception. He was given a name and number before he was shooed away.

Wirestock, Deposit Photos

The name he received was Sergei Kurnakov. Sax received the same name. Hall met Kurnakov two days later and turned over a report he had written on Los Alamos and a list of the scientists there as his bona fides.

Kurnakov was a low-level officer without diplomatic cover, so he couldn’t open a permanent channel to Ted Hall. After this meeting, Hall was in a quandary. He had told Kurnakov that any contact in New Mexico would be difficult, if not impossible. Still, the Soviets did not assign him a handler, possibly because they did not trust this whiz kid who came forward without recruitment. Hall and Sax were left to determine their own method of sending information.

They devised a code based on the book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman. In letters, they would quote a line of these poems, and the poem number and line number corresponded to the date they would meet. These letters easily passed through the censorship in Los Alamos.

paulbradyphoto, Deposit Photos

Their first meeting was in March 1945, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sax travelled there under the cover of visiting the University of New Mexico as a possible new student. Hall met him to pass on his information. Since the material was highly technical, Hall had to write it down. He used his own version of invisible ink and wrote it on the back of an innocuous document.

This was the first information the Soviets received about the problems of a plutonium bomb. They were suspicious of the information until they received confirmation from Klaus Fuchs. At that point, they realized Hall was a trust-worthy source and assigned him a Soviet handler. Hall and his handler met once, on August 6, the same day that Hiroshima was bombed.

Hall left Los Alamos in 1946 and was honorably discharged. He lost his security clearance, not because of his transfer of atomic secrets, but because he changed his field of research.

vampy1, Deposit Photos

In 1951, the FBI confronted Ted Hall and Saville Sax about their espionage activities. The FBI had absolute proof of their activities due to the top secret Venona project, which decrypted many of the Soviet telegrams during the war. However, they knew they would not be able to use this information in court. They needed either Hall or Sax to confess and implicate the other. Neither man did. Because of this, Hall never faced trial for his espionage. His name and activities only became public in the 1990s, when the Venona project was declassified.

When he first became aware that his name would become public, Hall drafted a document to explain his rationale for his actions. While Hall never released this document, he did give it to the authors of his biography, Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy. In this document, Hall stated “the situation was far more complicated than I understood at the time, and if confronted with the same problem today I would respond quite differently.”

Martha Hutchens is a transplanted southerner who lives in Los Alamos, NM where she is surrounded by history so unbelievable it can only be true. She won the 2019 Golden Heart for Romance with Religious and Spiritual Elements. A former analytical chemist and retired homeschool mom, Martha is frequently found working on her latest knitting project when she isn’t writing.

Martha’s current novella is set in southeast Missouri during World War II. It is free to her newsletter subscribers. You can subscribe to my newsletter at my website, www.marthahutchens.com

After saving for years, Dot Finley's brother finally paid a down payment for his own land—only to be drafted into World War II. Now it is up to her to ensure that he doesn't lose his dream while fighting for everyone else's. No one is likely to help a sharecropper's family.

Nate Armstrong has all the land he can manage, especially if he wants any time to spend with his four-year-old daughter. Still, he can't stand by and watch the Finley family lose their dream. Especially after he learns that the banker's nephew has arranged to have their loan called.

Necessity forces them to work together. Can love grow along with crops?

David Greenglass: Atomic Spy in the Manhattan Project

by Martha Hutchens

Sign at Los Alamos, NM
Image by Martha Hutchens

“If these two die, I shall live the rest of my life with a very dark shadow on my conscience.” David Greenglass

There were three known spies in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. (There is a code name for one more, but many believe he was made up by the Russians as a disinformation campaign.) The last two months, I discussed the most famous, Klaus Fuchs. Today, I will tell you about David Greenglass.

David was born in New York City on March 2, 1922. He had an older half-brother, and two older siblings, of which his sister Ethel would be the most important to the course of his life. His father ran a machine shop, and David enjoyed reading the technical manuals there from a young age.

Komsomol Membership Card
Image by Mankukuku via Deposit Photos

Ethel became involved in labor disputes and joined the Young Communist League. She met Julius Rosenberg there, and they married in 1939. Ethel and Julius were true believers and active in the communist cause. They recruited David to joint them.

David never believed in communism enough “keep delivering papers on a Sunday morning,” one of his early assignments. He attended meetings infrequently and was delinquent in paying his dues. He dropped out of the league after a year or two.

David entered college to study engineering, but spent so much time with the neighbor girl, Ruth Printz that he failed his classes and was asked to withdraw. He worked at several machinist jobs before finally taking a job at Peerless Laboratories. Ruth and David married in November of 1942. He was drafted in April of 1943. He was first assigned to the Army Ordnance Base at Aberdeen, Maryland.

Image by Stockasso via Deposit Photos

On one of his trips back to New York to visit Ruth, he attended the movies with Ruth, Ethel and Julius. Julius informed him that he had volunteered to spy for the Soviets. While the particulars of his introduction vary, it seems clear that he was already spying by late 1942.

David and Ruth discussed their communist leanings in the letters that they exchanged. While nothing in the letters was censored, they would later be used as evidence against him. While David was in the army, Ruth became more active in Communism, finally becoming president of a chapter of the Young Communist League.

David was assigned to various places stateside while he worked in the army as a machinist. Occasionally, Ruth managed to join him in the place he was assigned. On June 30, 1944, six men were assigned by name to the Special Engineer Detachment, Manhattan District, in Oak Ridge Tennessee. One of these men was AWOL, and was replaced with David Greenglass.

In letters, Ruth pressed him about this assignment. In one letter, she mentioned that Julius told her what David must be working on.

After only a week at Oak Ridge, David Greenglass was transferred to Los Alamos.

Lamy Train Station where many
Los Alamos scientists (including David Greenglass)
 left the train for buses to Santa Fe
Image by Martha Hutchens

David arrived at Los Alamos at the same time when the Soviets lost contact with Klaus Fuchs. At this time, Julius was actively spying for the Soviets. He mentioned that his brother-in-law was working in a facility in New Mexico. Leading Soviet agents in New York sought permission to recruit Ruth and, through her, David. That permission was granted on October 3, 1944.

David and Ruth planned to meet in Albuquerque in early December of 1944. On December 2, Ruth delivered a message from Julius to David, asking him to give information to the Soviets. Ruth claimed not to be happy with the idea, but left the decision to David. David answered the general questions sent by Julius, such as the number of people employed there and the number of buildings in use.

Two days later, David returned to Los Alamos to begin his career as a spy.

On January 1, 1945, David arrived in New York City to visit Ruth. He transmitted information that Los Alamos was working on two types of atomic bombs. The Soviets had already received this information from Ted Hall, but they did not trust it. Eventually, it would be confirmed by Klaus Fuchs.

Image by Wirestock via Deposit Photos

In February, Ruth moved to Albuquerque, and David was allowed frequent passes to visit her. During one of these passes, Harry Gold met with David Greenglass.

Harry Gold was Klaus Fuchs’ Soviet contact. His meeting with a second source was a violation of tradecraft, because if he knew more than one spy, he could reveal more than one spy. Eventually, this is exactly what would happen.

When Klaus Fuchs’ activities were revealed, he was given the choice of revealing his comrades or being executed. He revealed the only person he knew, Harry Gold. When Harry Gold was given the same choice, he revealed the only other operatives he knew, David and Ruth Greenglass. In 1950, David was detained. He confessed, and implicated his sister and brother-in-law, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They never confessed, and refused to implicate anyone.

Image by zeferli via Deposit Photos

The Rosenbergs were tried in 1951. David agreed to testify in an agreement to prevent Ruth from being tried. David was sentenced to 15 years, of which he served nine and a half. He wrote to the president requesting clemency for the Rosenbergs, but they were executed in 1953. The quote at the beginning of this post comes from that letter.

David Greenglass is an ambiguous character. He never seemed completely committed to the communist cause. He received little financial incentive for his espionage. His motives for his actions seem contradictory at best. Of the three known spies in Los Alamos during World War II, I find him the most confusing.

Klaus Fuchs: Soviet Spy in the Manhattan Project (Part 2)

by Martha Hutchens

Bridge over the Santa Fe River, 
Image by Martha Hutchens

The picture seems so innocent. However, as near as we can determine, this is the very place where the Cold War began.

But first, let’s back up a bit. In Part 1 of this post, I talked about Klaus Fuchs’ early life before he joined the British nuclear program in Spring of 1941. He would work with Rudolf Peierls, another German immigrant who was a theoretical physicist.

Also during this time, Fuchs connected with his Soviet contact, Ursula Kuczynski, code named Sonya. For possibly the first time, Fuchs passed work on to the Soviet Union. On June 18, 1942, Fuchs signed the Official Secrets Act, well after he began sharing information with the USSR. He was then given access to all the material in the British nuclear program.

Before this could happen, MI5 did a background check. The German report that Fuchs was a “notorious communist” raised concern, but was overshadowed by the fact that it was reported by the Gestapo, not exactly a reliable source.

In August of 1943, the British and Americans signed a pact to work together on the atomic bomb project. The die was cast.

270 Broadway, New York, New York
New York offices of the Manhattan Project
Also the source of the project's name
Image by Martha Hutchens

On December 3, 1943, Fuchs arrived in the US along with the rest of the “British Mission.” These British scientists worked on the Manhattan Project from an office building in New York City. They were not subjected to the same background check that American scientists faced, because they had already passed a similar check in England.

If the Americans were to see Fuchs’ background check, they might have been concerned. It included entries such as: 

 “[Fuchs is] rather safer in America than in this country . . . away from his English friends. It would not be so easy for Fuchs to make contact with Communists in America, and that in any case he would probably be more roughly handled were he found out.”

Image by Wirestock on Deposit Photos

While Fuchs was in New York, he visited his sister for Christmas. Later, in February, he made contact with his second Soviet handler, code named Raymond. They met monthly, and Fuchs passed on many handwritten documents. When his work in New York was completed, Fuchs was first assigned to return to England. At the last minute, he was assigned to a different station, Los Alamos, NM.

As this was a last-minute assignment, Fuchs could not alert his handler about his trip. He left leave his sister instructions in case his handler, Raymond, contacted her. Of course, he gave the man a different name and didn’t mention his position.

Author Stokkete, Deposit Photos

In Los Alamos, Oppenheimer had early on made one critical decision. Any of the senior scientists could have access to any information on the project. If two men wore white badges, they could freely discuss anything together. Oppenheimer argued that scientific progress required this free exchange of ideas. He was right.

General Groves, the military leader of the project, argued that allowing every man to have access to all data gave much more opportunity for spying. He was also right, as Klaus Fuchs would prove. Fuchs attended most of the weekly symposiums, and collected information to pass on to his Russian handlers, if he could ever reconnect with them.

In February 1945, six months after Fuchs arrived in Los Alamos, he was allowed to visit his sister in Cambridge. She gave him Raymond’s contact information. He and Raymond met, and Fuchs described much about what was happening in Los Alamos. He also passed on documents that he wrote from memory while at his sister’s.

Spitz clock, Santa Fe, NM
Image by Martha Hutchens

He arranged for Raymond to meet him in Santa Fe, explaining that they should both set their watches by the large clock on San Francisco Street, then meet at the Castillo Bridge. They set the date and time as June 2, at 4 pm. On that day, Fuchs passed on detailed plans of the Fat Man bomb.

Fuchs and Raymond met again in September, but by this time the bombs were hardly secret.

Fuchs returned to England after the war, where he continued to work in the British atomic program.

However, in 1949, American codebreakers had broken enough of Soviet transmissions (Project Venona) to become aware of a spy among the British scientists in Los Alamos. Ironically, the information that would doom Fuchs passed through the hands of Kim Philby, a senior member of British counterintelligence, and another Soviet spy. Philby warned his KGB handlers that Fuchs was about to be identified, but the KGB did not warn Fuchs because they did not want to put Philby in danger.

Fuchs was arrested in 1950. Given the choice between cooperation and execution, Fuchs named his handler, Harry Gold. Gold was given the same choice, and he named David Greenglass as a second spy he dealt with. When interrogated, Greenglass named his sister and brother-in-law, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed without ever revealing any further spies.

The Russians detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949. It was an exact duplicate of the plans Fuchs delivered to them.

Author stockasso, Deposit Photos

Fuchs was generally respected by his colleagues in both Britain and America. However, Eleanor Jette has the following memory of Fuchs at Los Alamos:

“Fuchs was a cipher to me, a faceless nonentity despite all the occasions we were in his company. When the light of day was turned on his treachery, I realized he was perfect in his fole. Some years before I had discussed secret service work with a woman who was retired from it; I remarked that I always had a yen for it. She appraised me critically and shook her head.

‘You would never do, my dear. Your eyes are too blue, and your hair has too much red in it. Secret service work requires the operator to fade into the background.’

I didn’t recall her words the day Marge Schreiber and I specifically discussed Fuchs.

‘That guy baffles me,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember what he looks like until the next time I see him.’

Marge shivered slightly. ‘He gives me the creeps. He sits in the corners at parties and never says a word. I’ve never heard him laugh. He has a high-pitched giggle, and it gives me chills.’ “ Quote from Inside Box 1663 by Eleanor Jette.

These words would prove prophetic.

Martha Hutchens is a transplanted southerner who lives in Los Alamos, NM where she is surrounded by history so unbelievable it can only be true. She won the 2019 Golden Heart for Romance with Religious and Spiritual Elements. A former analytical chemist and retired homeschool mom, Martha is frequently found working on her latest knitting project when she isn’t writing.

Martha’s current novella is set in southeast Missouri during World War II. It is free to her newsletter subscribers. You can subscribe to my newsletter at my website, www.marthahutchens.com

After saving for years, Dot Finley's brother finally paid a down payment for his own land—only to be drafted into World War II. Now it is up to her to ensure that he doesn't lose his dream while fighting for everyone else's. No one is likely to help a sharecropper's family.

Nate Armstrong has all the land he can manage, especially if he wants any time to spend with his four-year-old daughter. Still, he can't stand by and watch the Finley family lose their dream. Especially after he learns that the banker's nephew has arranged to have their loan called.

Necessity forces them to work together. Can love grow along with crops?

Stories from the Secret City (Part 2)--Plus Huge Giveaway

by Martha Hutchens

WAC barracks room, photo by Martha Hutchens

At the end of the last post I told you about a road in Los Alamos named Bathtub Row, because as legend has it, these four houses had the only four bathtubs in town. As I mentioned last time, legends are sometimes wrong, and this one is—at least slightly. Turns out there were at least two more bathtubs in Los Alamos during the war. They were located in the WACs barracks, one of which is still standing today. The picture above is from that building, which is occasionally open for tours. This particular barracks had individual rooms, but many did not.

The women who lived there filled many roles in our town. They manned the PX milkshake machine, filled out numerous army forms, operated the telephone lines, and performed a million other tasks necessary to a town. A select few chosen for their mathematical abilities worked in the tech area as calculators—humans who performed the work that digital calculators do today.

Deposit Photos

As one would expect, some of the most famous scientists of the war figure prominently in the stories of Los Alamos. One legend has George Kistiakowsky, a high explosives expert and avid skier, carefully eyeing the mountains behind Los Alamos and planning his tests. When he finished, he said, “There’s your ski hill.” It is perhaps a bit more accurate—though less colorful--to say that he used high explosives to clear the way to add a rope tow to an existing ski hill.

Niels Bohr on Los Alamos ski Hill
from Just Crazy to Ski
by Deanna Morgan Kirby

Several of the European-born scientists grew up skiing, and that sky hill saw many of them teaching their American colleagues. One famous picture shows Niels Bohr on the local ski hill, though no one will admit to taking the picture. Private cameras were not allowed in Los Alamos during the war years, and photos of the scientists famous enough to travel under pseudonyms--Niels Bohr travelled as Nicholas Baker--were doubly forbidden.

Many Los Alamos legends involve Richard Feynman, who had only recently received his Ph. D. when he arrived in Los Alamos. His irrepressible humor lightens our legends. It is true that Feynman taught himself to crack safes and frequently raided safes of his colleagues in the technical area. It is also true that General Leslie Groves kept candy in his safe. Do we know for sure that the general came into his office one morning to find his entire stash relocated to his desktop, courtesy of Feynman? I suspect it might be. 

Deposit Photos

Feynman gave security fits. One day he discovered a hole in the fence that surrounded the town. I suspect Feynman eyed that fence with a gleam in his eye before he proceeded to exit the town, walk around, and enter through the gate. Legend has it that he did this five or six times before security realized he had entered multiple times, but never left. (In point of fact, there were many holes in the fence. The terrain just didn’t allow for a solid fence. Therefore, the area around the town was also patrolled by mounted MPs.)

While mail coming from overseas was routinely censored, mail from the United States was not. Los Alamos was the exception. All mail leaving the town was censored, which caused Feynman a problem. His wife lived in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Albuquerque, NM. Feynman wrote his letters to her in code, because she loved to break cyphers. Needless to say, the censors were not amused. Eventually a truce was established. Feynman would write his letter in code and include a translation which the censor would read and remove, so as not to deprive Mrs. Feynman of the pleasure of breaking it.

On a side note, Feynman wrote one of the most heart-breaking love letters of all time to his wife after she succumbed to the disease. You can read it here. I find it fitting that even in this somber note his sense of humor emerges at the end, where he writes, “Please excuse my not mailing this—but I don’t know your new address.”

Another group of scientists in Los Alamos were called the Special Engineer Detachment. Many of these young men had joined up after Pearl Harbor and had technical degrees so they were assigned to the Manhattan Project. One young man got assigned to New Mexico after helping clear a lab in the Pacific. Looting was entirely forbidden, but this soldier spied an platinum beaker and slipped it in his pocket. Not long after he received new orders, but due to the secrecy they didn’t tell him where he was going, only that MPs were going to accompany him. He spent the entire trip convinced he was being sent to Fort Leavenworth for taking that platinum beaker.

The legends of Los Alamos are many and varied. I hope you have enjoyed the ones I have shared with you.

Martha Hutchens is a transplanted southerner who lives in Los Alamos, NM where she is surrounded by history so unbelievable it can only be true. She won the 2019 Golden Heart for Romance with Religious and Spiritual Elements. A former analytical chemist and retired homeschool mom, Martha is frequently found working on her latest knitting project when she isn’t writing.

Martha’s current novella is set in southeast Missouri during World War II. It is free to her newsletter subscribers. You can subscribe to my newsletter at my website, www.marthahutchens.com

After saving for years, Dot Finley's brother finally paid a down payment for his own land—only to be drafted into World War II. Now it is up to her to ensure that he doesn't lose his dream while fighting for everyone else's. No one is likely to help a sharecropper's family.

Nate Armstrong has all the land he can manage, especially if he wants any time to spend with his four-year-old daughter. Still, he can't stand by and watch the Finley family lose their dream. Especially after he learns that the banker's nephew has arranged to have their loan called.

Necessity forces them to work together. Can love grow along with crops?

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Stories from the Secret City (Part 1)

by Martha Hutchens

Nobel Prize Medal in Los Alamos County History Museum,
 photo by Martha Hutchens

Los Alamos, New Mexico is a small town with a big history, mostly in science. After all, how many small town museums have a Nobel Prize as their prime exhibit? Or a television monitor on main street that broadcasts “News from Mars” (camera feed from the Mars explorer.) 

But science wasn’t the only thing that happened in this town at the heart of World War II’s Manhattan Project. Regular life had to happen too—as well as it could around the security involved in being a secret city. Because of that, many legends have sprung up around life in Los Alamos during WWII. I thought I might share a few of them with you today. Most are true or at least have truth in them, but all give a look at the humorous side of living in “The Town that Never Was.”

Interior of Lamy Train Station, built 1909 and still
in use as an Amtrak station
Photo by Martha Hutchens

Arriving in Los Alamos was no easy feat. People were told to report to 109 East Palace, Santa Fe, New Mexico, because the very words “Los Alamos” were classified. The nearest train depot for people arriving from the east was in Lamy, NM. Military buses picked up passengers and transported them to Santa Fe, where the weary travelers learned that they still had approximately four hours to go—including the infamous Hill Road, a road up the mountain with switch backs so sharp that one had a bulldozer stationed beside it to give buses a nudge when they couldn’t complete the turn.

The most famous scientists that took part in the project traveled under assumed names. No bureaucrat wanted the enemy to notice the amount of scientific talent that had disappeared into the New Mexico mountains. Therefore, Enrico Fermi became Eugene Farmer, Niels Bohr became Nicolas Baker, and his son, Aage Bohr, became James Baker.

One unfortunate wife arrived in Lamy after her husband and attempted to board the bus to Santa Fe. The driver asked her name and checked his list. No, her name wasn’t there. She couldn’t get in. No arguing that her husband already lived there availed until someone realized that no one had told her she had a new name!

Jemez Mountains in the Evening, Los Alamos is 
located on the easter edge of the Jemez
Photo by Martha Hutchens

Because the town name couldn’t be mentioned, the residents developed nicknames for it. Shangri-La (a remote imaginary place) was popular. I really enjoy “Lost Almost.” for its pun. The Hill is the nickname that remains to this day, because Los Alamos is on the edge of a mountain range overlooking the Espanola valley. Funny thing. I don’t think the men who chose the location for this town were Bible scholars. After all, “a city on a hill cannot be hid.” (Matt:5:14) Just as the Bible says, when you drive toward the town at night, the lights of this city float in the sky. 

While Los Alamos may have been a secret to the world at large, everyone knew about it in north central New Mexico, a fact demonstrated by the following story. A quirk of Los Alamos construction had scalding hot water occasionally emerging from the cold water taps. One man went to a plumbing supply place in Santa Fe to look at shower heads. He asked the proprietor if a particular model would stand up to very hot water. The owner immediately replied that he had sold many of that brand to people in Los Alamos.

How could he—or the other locals—know who lived in Los Alamos? Simple. The locals were accustomed to the intense sun that comes with high altitude. The newcomers wore hats! It also helped that the FBI frequently followed Los Alamos residents when they shopped in Santa Fe.

According to legend, another resident had a problem with the secrecy surround identities. He was supposedly stopped for a traffic violation somewhere between Santa Fe and Los Alamos. The officer asked the man’s name. I am sure he winced at the question, but he politely replied, “I’m sorry, Officer. I am not allowed to say.” The officer swore for a few minutes, then asked for the man’s driver’s license. I can only imagine how the poor scientist felt when he handed over a license that didn’t have a name, only a number. Supposedly, the man was only allowed to leave after the governor of the state got involved in the standoff. Personally, I doubt the governor part of this legend, but the licenses with no name, address, or signature were true, as you can see from the photo below.

Eleanor Jette's Driver's License, taken from
Inside Box 1663, by Eleanor Jette

Finally, I couldn’t finish the post without a mention of the famous Bathtub Row. You see, before the war, a private ranch school occupied the Los Alamos town site. It had only a handful of buildings. By the end of the war, over 5000 people lived there, most in hastily constructed apartments which didn’t have bathtubs. Metal rationing is an simple explanation for this lack, but town lore blames General Groves, the leader of the project and a man well known for his penny-pinching when it came to the civilians in the town.

But the four houses that had belonged to instructors of the ranch school had bathtubs and were built along a single street, which was immediately dubbed Bathtub Row. When I arrived in Los Alamos seventeen years ago, the street had a different name, but I doubt anyone remembers it. The county finally bowed to reality a few years later and admitted what everyone else already knew. That street only had one name.

Street sign in Los Alamos
Photo by Martha Hutchens

I hope you enjoyed these stories from a quirky time and place in American history. If you would like to learn more, I highly recommend the memoir, Inside Box 1663 by Eleanor Jette. 

Does your home town have similar legends?

Martha Hutchens is a transplanted southerner who lives in Los Alamos, NM where she is surrounded by history so unbelievable it can only be true. She won the 2019 Golden Heart for Romance with Religious and Spiritual Elements. A former analytical chemist and retired homeschool mom, Martha is frequently found working on her latest knitting project when she isn’t writing.

Martha’s current novella is set in southeast Missouri during World War II. It is free to her newsletter subscribers. You can subscribe to my newsletter at my website, marthahutchens.com.

After saving for years, Dot Finley's brother finally paid a down payment for his own land—only to be drafted into World War II. Now it is up to her to ensure that he doesn't lose his dream while fighting for everyone else's. No one is likely to help a sharecropper's family.

Nate Armstrong has all the land he can manage, especially if he wants any time to spend with his four-year-old daughter. Still, he can't stand by and watch the Finley family lose their dream. Especially after he learns that the banker's nephew has arranged to have their loan called.

Necessity forces them to work together. Can love grow along with crops?

Chien-Shiung Wu, Physicist

I love stories of women who overcome the odds to make strides in areas where women are not usually allowed. Since this is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, I wanted to share the story of Chien-Shiung Wu, an amazing woman who contributed much to scientific discovery.

 

Chien-Shiung Wu
Wikimedia Commons

Chien-Shiung Wu was born near Shanghai in 1912. She attended a school her father started. Since he believed in educating woman, something that was not encouraged at that time, Wu grew up well educated and went on to attend a university in Shanghai where she studied physics. After graduation, she followed advice and traveled to America to further her studies.

 

Her uncle assisted by financing her trip to America and she arrived in San Francisco in 1936. Her plans to continue to Michigan with a friend and study at the University of Michigan were derailed when Wu discovered that women in Michigan were not allowed to use the front entrance but had to go around back. Instead, Wu chose to attend the more liberal University of California, Berkeley.

Chien and Lewis
Photo by Knottinghill
Wikimedia Commons

 

At Berkeley, Wu met Luke Chia-Liu Yuan, another physicist, who would later become her husband. Yuan introduced her to several very influential physicists and Raymond T. Birge, the head of the physics department offerend her a place in the graduate school even though the year had already started. Wu made friends with Margaret Lewis and others, and settled in to life in America and the school. 

 

Wu and Yuan Wedding
Photo by Knottinghill
Wikimedia Commons

In 1940, Wu completed her doctorate, and  in 1942 she married Yuan. Unable to find a research position, Wu accepted a physics teaching position at Princeton and at Smith College. Wu was the first female professor in the physics department of Princeton. 

In 1944, Chien-Shiung Wu became the only Asian to join the Manhattan Project. She work in the Subsitute Alloy Marerials (SAM) laboratories. One of the men working on the nuclear reactor recalled Wu’s doctoral paper, which hadn’t been published but was on the needed subject. He went to her room to retrieve the draft of her paper. She was able to help figure out the problem with the reactor and help with producing enriched uranium for the bomb. They wanted to publish her paper but she refused at the time, fearing the research would fall into the wrong hands.

 

Chien at Columbia U.
Wikimedia Commons

At the end of the war, Wu took a position at Columbia University and studied beta decay. She made several contributions, and was able to confirm Enrico Fermi’s theory of beta decay, something that had not been confirmed prior to her studies.

 

Wu's parity experiment
By Pnn88 
Wikimedia Commons

One of the most notable achievements Wu made was when she was contacted by Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang who asked her to help prove their theory that the law of conservation of parity didn’t hold true during beta decay. The law of parity says all objects and their mirror images behave the same way, but the left hand and right hand are reversed. Wu proved that identical nuclear particles do not always act alike using radioactive cobalt at near absolute zero temperatures. Lee and Yang received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for their theory, but Wu’s work was not acknowledged. 

 

Throughout her life Chien-Shiung Wu received many awards. They included the National Medal of Science, the Comstock Prize, and the first honorary doctorate awarded to a woman at Princeton University. In 1978, she won the Wolf Prize in physics. She was the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society. She wrote the book, Beta Decay, (1965) which is still used as a standard reference for nuclear physicists.

 

Wu honored, Curie award
Photo by Amanda Phingbohipakkiya
Wikimedia Commons

Chien-Shiung Wu was an amazing woman who overcame great odds to achieve all she did. She paved the way for woman in the field of science and physics, and was often compared to Marie Curie. Her actual list of achievements and awards are more than I can list here.  

An interesting note - After I had written this post and scheduled it, I went to the post office to mail a package. On the counter, they had an ad with the newest stamps being released. There was a stamp honoring Chien-Shiung Wu. I was so surprised. I probably babbled to the postal worker about writing the blog post about her and what an amazing woman she was. If you're in the post office, take a look at that stamp.

Nancy J Farrier is an award-winning author who lives in Southern Arizona in the Sonoran Desert. She loves the Southwest with its interesting historical past. When Nancy isn’t writing, she loves to read, do needlecraft, play with her cats, and spend time with her family. You can read more about Nancy and her books on her website: nancyjfarrier.com.

Joan Curran, Physicist and Inventor

By Nancy J. Farrier

Joan Strothers
Wikimedia Commons

Joan Strothers  Curran is a little known name, yet her inventions made a significant impact with during WWII, saving many lives. 

 

She was born in 1916 in Wales, attended a girls’ high school there and won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. Joan completed an honors degree program in physics at Cambridge, but was denied the actual degree, because at that time women were not allowed a degree from Cambridge.

Cambridge, Newnham College
Photo by Azeira, Wikimedia Commons

Joan had a gift for science and physics and after completing her first degree in 1938, she received a government grant to continue her doctorate in physics at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory where she worked with another physicist, Sam Curran. Joan and Sam worked well together but as the war heated up, she and Sam were often transferred to other facilities to work on war specific designs. 

 

During this time, they developed proximity fuses, used to destroy enemy planes and rockets. This fuse would detonate a launched rocket before it could strike the intended target. Britain did not have the resources to mass-produce the fuse so they sent the design to the United States. The Americans were able to mass-produce the fuse, sending them back to Britain to help in the war. 

 

Joan and Sam married in November of 1940. They were transferred to the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) where Sam worked on centimetric radar and Joan was assigned to a counter measures group. This is where Joan developed the radar cloaking technique called Window by the British and Düppel by the German Luftwaffe. Later the radar cloaking device became known as Chaff.

 

Joan believed strips of metal would deflect the radar and confuse the enemy about the location of the plane or planes. She worked with many different sizes of metal, including one that was a thin metal sheet also used to print a message for the people after the metal fell to the ground. In the end, she decided to use thin tin foil strips, less than and inch wide and almost ten inches long. Bundles of these strips would be thrown from the lead plane in a raid and form a cloud of confusion for the radar devices of the enemy.

Lancaster dropping chaff over Essen during
a thousand bomber raid. 
Wikimedia Commons

 

Chaff was first tested during Operation Gomorrah, a raid on Hamburg. The loss of planes and lives was much lower and credited to the use of Joan’s device. The Allies went on to use Window or chaff to confuse the enemy during large bomber raids. The Allies used chaff combined with dummy parachutists in Northern France to deflect the enemy from the invasion in Normandy. Joan is credited with helping to bring about victory for the Allies and lessening the loss of planes and lives.

Chaff on Radar
Wikimedia Commons

In 1944, the Curran’s went to the USA to work on the Manhattan Project, which developed the Atomic Bomb. They were sent to Berkeley, California to join the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. They helped to develop an electromagnetic isotope separation process to make enriched uranium for the atomic bomb.

 

In Berkeley, Joan gave birth to their first child, a daughter. Their daughter had a severe mental disability, which made Joan sensitive to the issues of the handicapped. Joan and Sam had three sons, all of whom grew up and completed their own PhD’s. 

 

After the war ended, Joan and Sam went to Glasgow, Scotland, where Sam became the Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow University. Joan was very active in the Scottish Society for the Parents of Mentally Handicapped Children, which the Curran’s and some of their friends started. Joan worked toward the needs of the handicapped and the disabled. 

 

In 1987, Joan received her first degree from the University of Strathclyde, as a Doctor of Laws honoris causa. This is an honorary degree that includes the sciences. Sam died in February 1998 and Joan died of cancer one year later. 

 

I enjoyed researching and learning about this amazing woman who did so much to further science and save lives. Have you ever heard of Joan Curran or her inventions? A colleague of Joan's said, “In my opinion, Joan Curran made an even greater contribution to victory, in 1945, than Sam.”  What an amazing legacy.

Nancy J Farrier is an award-winning author who lives in Southern Arizona in the Sonoran Desert. She loves the Southwest with its interesting historical past. When Nancy isn’t writing, she loves to read, do needlecraft, play with her cats, and spend time with her family. You can read more about Nancy and her books on her website: nancyjfarrier.com.