History 4000

History 4000 Papers

Earlier 4000 Papers

2285 Attendance

History 2285

Conant, Jennet.  109 East Palace Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2005

Conant chronicles the events that occurred at the city of Los Alamos from interviews, manuscripts, and speeches of Dorothy McKibbin explaingin her duties as a secretary and gatekeeper of the Los Alamos project.  McKibbins provided insight on women and wives of Los Alamos, as she was the key person Oppenheimer used to problem solve many domestic issues among women.

Curie, Eve. Madame Curie: A Biography. Translated by Vincent Sheean. New York: The Literary Guild of America, Inc., 1937.

Within Madam Curie: A Biography, Eve Curie, Marie Curie’s daughter, gives vivid insight of Marie Curie’s life.  Eve Curie chronicles Marie Curie’s legendary achievements in the pioneering of radioactivity.  The personal relation of the author gives an exceptional detail of Marie Curie that no other biographer can provide.

Kelly, Cynithia C. The Manhattan Project. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc. 2007

Kelly provides several different sources in an attempt to honor and remember the figures that were involved with the Manhattan Project.  With little author interpretation of the sources, Kelly does provide a plethora of sources to engage a reader into further investigation of different topics such as women involved

Goldsmith, Barbara. Obsessive Genius: The inner world of Marie Curie. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2005.

Obsessive Genius observes the life of Marie Curie and partly her daughter, Irene Curie.  Goldsmith produces an excellent composition of the Curie papers, showing the bleak and more tragic side of Marie Curie’s life.  Goldsmith is a great reference on the Curie’s lives and how they work so hard on a product that eventually claimed their lives.

Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York: Alfred A Knopf, Inc. 1973.

Hersey’s Hiroshima focuses on the result of the atomic bomb and how a nuclear bomb changed the world.  Hersey focus on the atrocities gives a reader a slightly bias view on the United States and the use of the bomb on Japan.  Hersey provides a good context of the Atomic bomb with the views of the people affected and aftermath of the bomb’s impact on the world.

James, Ioan. Remarkable Physicists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2004.

In Remarkable Physicists, James chronicles several physicists of the world ranging from Galileo to Yukawa, including the critical members in developing the physics of the atomic bomb.  Of the members that contributed to the atomic bomb are the women physicists: Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.  Despite the writing is directed to a less scholarly population; it is informative and a great biological index of key physicists.

Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer, eds. Notable Women in the Physical Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Shearer and Shearer catalog several women that have had a significant impact in physical sciences, including the women scientist that were involved in the physics that made the atomic bomb possible.  The brief articles dedicated to Marie Curie and Lise Meitner are concise and provide an introduction to further research.

 Sime, Ruth Lewin. Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Sime, a professor of chemistry at Sacramento City College, produced Lise Meitner: A life in physics as a direct rebuttal to the omission of several works of female scientist being dismissed bby historians.  Sime attacks the historiography of many different authors stating that women suffer a double exclusion, from history and from science.  Sime proactive feminism and admirer of Lise Meitner is excellent inspiration for her book, and gives explanation why Lise Meitner critical discoveries may have been excluded from many historians’ works.

Wilson, Jane S. STANDING BY AND MAKING DO: Women of wartime Los Alamos. Los Alamos: The Los Alamos Historical Society. 1988

Wilson catalogs nine different women’s account while they worked on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos.  The accounts of each woman’s testimonies are brief but provide a reader with a firsthand account of women’s importance in the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb.

Yellin, Emily. Our mothers’ war: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II. New York: Free Press. 2004

Yellin, compelled to unearth the history women that served American during World War II, began her research on women that were working to bring their men home safely, serving in the newly opened branches of the military for women, and the positions women filled while men were overseas.  Yellin dedicates a chapter to the wives and WACs that worked in the secret city of Los Alamos.  Yellin focuses on the minor home front issues women fulfilled and how women were necessary support roles in developing the atomic bomb.