Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

History Article Roundup – December 2016

Freeman Dyson

Several fascinating articles were published in December on Manhattan Project, World War II, and science history.

  • What newly surfaced atomic bomb postal history teaches us: Interesting article on philately and the Manhattan Project, and what can be learned about the Manhattan Project from first day covers and stamps from the Belgian Congo, Hanford, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge.
  • My Life with the Physics Dream Team: Wonderful interview with renowned mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson. He recalls interacting with Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and J. Robert Oppenheimer after the war. He remembered Oppenheimer as a “a very temperamental, unpredictable kind of character. He would suddenly blow hot or cold and you never knew which one you had to deal with. He could be extremely generous and friendly or he could be very harsh.”
  • Marie Curie, Ambulance Driver: The Trailblazing Scientist’s Little-Known Humanitarian Heroism and Her Life-Saving Mobile X-Ray Units: During World War I, Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie set up and drove mobile X-ray units to diagnose the wounded. Her daughter, 17-year-old (and future Nobel Prize winner) Irene, assisted her mother with the “Little Curies,” which treated an estimated one million soldiers.
  • Marion Pritchard, Dutch rescuer of Jewish children during the Holocaust, dies at 96: Marion Pritchard aided as many as 150 Dutch Jews during the Holocaust. Mrs. Pritchard was recognized in 1981 by Yad Vashem as one of the “righteous among the nations.”