The Atomic Heritage Foundation is saddened to report the death of Manhattan Project veteran, physicist and nuclear engineer Dr. Raymond Murray on June 22, 2011 at the age of 91 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Dr. Murray was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1920 and received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in physics from the University of Nebraska. He soon married and moved to Berkeley, California, where he became a teaching assistant and took two of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s courses. In 1943 Dr. Murray left to work on the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he supervised the separation of uranium isotopes at the Y-12 Plant.
In 1950 Dr. Murray received his doctorate in physics from the University of Tennessee, then became a physics professor at North Carolina State University, where he helped to build the first nuclear reactor at a university. He became head of the university’s nuclear engineering department in 1963. During his long career, he received numerous awards and published more than 75 papers and many books.
To view an obituary of Dr. Murray, please visit this website.