Glenn Seaborg recalls luring scientists to join the Metallurgical Laboratory. Larry Bartell remembers being interviewed by Seaborg – and relates how the future Nobel Prize winner got him out of his final exams.
Narrator: Recruiting young scientists to work on the top-secret project could be a problem. Glenn Seaborg explains his approach.
Glenn Seaborg: I had trouble getting recruits. I would write to a young fellow at a university, and he would write back that he was doing something important. I don't know, he was synthesizing an anti-malarial compound or something, you know, another one, and he just couldn’t come. I would write back, and I couldn’t tell him. I would write, “Just trust me.”
It was very often my people I’d met earlier in life—schoolmates at UCLA or something like this. I can remember writing back, “You just come. We’re working on something that’s more important than the discovery of electricity.”
This almost always brought them. “My God, more important than the discovery of electricity?” So they’d turn up.
Narrator: Lawrence Bartell was still a student at the University of Michigan when he interviewed with Seaborg for a job at the Met Lab.
Lawrence Bartell: When I went [to Chicago] early in 1944, I was interviewed by Glenn Seaborg himself. The interview seemed to have gone well enough, so he said, “I’ll give you a job. When can you start?”
I said, “I can start today except for one detail. Next week I have my final examinations in my senior year.”
He said, “Wait here a minute,” and he disappeared. He came back with a big grin on his face. He said, “I’ve relieved you of having to take any of those final exams.” So I did start that day.