History Article Roundup – February 2018

Here is a roundup of some of the most interesting content published on the Manhattan Project and nuclear history in the past month.

• Science and Conscience: Chicago’s Met Lab and the Manhattan Project: An exhibit at the University of Chicago’s Special Collections Research Center Exhibition Gallery focuses on the Chicago Met Lab’s role during the Manhattan Project. It also documents scientists’ responses to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• Daughter Keeps Mother’s Promise to Digitize Renowned Physicist’s Research in Oak Ridge: Selma Shapiro, the first director for the Oak Ridge Children’s Museum, was good friends with Oak Ridge National Laboratory director Alvin Weinberg. Weinberg gave Shapiro his ORNL papers, and now her daughter Rhonda Bogard is raising funds to digitize the collection.
• How a Sneak Attack By Norway’s Skiing Soldiers Deprived the Nazis of the Atomic Bomb: Smithsonian magazine describes Operation Gunnerside, the successful mission by Norwegian commandos to set off explosives inside the Norsk Hydro plant in Nazi-controlled Norway. This mission and other acts of sabotage prevented the Nazis from using the plant’s supply of heavy water in their atomic bomb project.
• Unexpected Encounter Leads To Interview With Manhattan Project Veteran Reid Cameron: Sharon Snyder describes her visit to Grand Junction, CO, with Heather McClenahan to record an interview with Manhattan Project veteran Reid Cameron.