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Brandon Blue

History 4000 - The Atomic Bomb

July 02, 2008

Women and the Development of Nuclear Weapons

This writer contends that contrary to popular belief, women made a significant contribution to the development of nuclear weapons.  The subordinate role that women carried during the time of World War influences many historians, forming biases on women’s contributions to many war efforts, including the controversial topic of the war, the atomic bomb.  The role women play in history as subordinates to men, along with war time efforts often dominated by men, women often tend to be omitted or second to men when it comes to historical accounts of nuclear weapons.

The United States has always been reluctant to treat women as equals of men.  Historians often focused on the men that have made the discoveries towards weapons and technologies of war, while other writers over state the accomplishments of women and form a feminist view.  Both interpretations of this history does not give a reader an equal representation of the events and people that developed nuclear weapons.  Women provided scientific discoveries to the physics behind the nuclear weapons, direct assistance to other scientist in discovering the technologies to make the atomic bomb, and many women provided for the support staff to make the facilities of the Manhattan project possible.

Historiography

            In Remarkable Physicists, a book dedicated to the birth of physics over a 250 year period, gives a brief biography of fifty-one scientists.  Of these scientists are the people that discovered the physics behind the atomic bomb.  Only three scientists that James mentions are Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer of which his diction in describing these women is demeaning when compared to the diction he uses for the men.  James introduces the male scientist with quote from well known scientist, but when introducing the women scientist it is just a brief introduction of their accomplishments.

            Eve Curie provides an intimate and vivid biography of Marie Curie’s life, outlining the accomplishments and hardships of Marie Curie.  Eve Curie uses her mother’s own records to illustrate Marie Curie and her dedication to the science, providing a reader with a thorough chronicle of Marie Curie’s early childhood, accomplishments, and the successes of her husband and daughter Irene.

            Ruth Sime’s book Lise Meitner A life in Physics attacks historians that have under-valuated women.  Sime contends that Lise Meitner broke the pattern of women scientist before her, stating that most women worked with male collaborators that would obscure the contributions women.  Sime chronicles Meitner’s life and contributes a portion of her undervaluation to the Nazi regime, which forced her to leave Germany and her scientific reputation.

In her book 109 East Palace Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, Jennet Conant gives the readers insight on the secret city of Los Alamos from Dorothy McKibbin’s view point.  McKibbin was an influential member of Oppenheimer’s facility, as she was the gatekeeper, the personal problem solver to Oppenheimer, and the connection to the public world to the citizens of the secret city.  Conant tends to reflect upon Oppenheimer largely in her book, but McKibbin is mentioned as a key figure to Oppenheimer and keeping Los Alamos together.

            Barbara Goldsmith, the author of Obsessive Genius, provides the more tragic and diligence of the Marie Curie and her daughter, Irene Curie.  Goldsmith contributes the greatness of Marie Curie’s achievements to her thoroughness and to her husband’s assistance and his prior experience and achievements in physics.  This book accredits a lot of Marie Curie’s success to her husband, Pierre Curie’s, previous findings and teaching.

            Our Mothers’ War Americna Women at Home and at the front during World War II unearths the history of women that participated in war efforts of World War II.  Emily Yellin suggest that women are under appreciated in history and her goal was to reveal “the other American soldier.”  Yellin reveals the intricate roles that women played in many different aspect of wartime America, including one chapter to Los Alamos.

            Jane Wilson provides the stories of nine different women compiled in her book STANDING BY AND MAKING DO: Women of Wartime Los Alamos. Wilson notes that after Robert Marshak, husband of Ruth Marshak, received a proposal to compile a human-interested story about Los Alamos and handed it over to Ruth.  Ruth composed the book plan, as Wilson and Charlotte Serber compiled the chapters, only to have their book rejected by the publishers that requested such a book.  This obvious states the view point of women in Los Alamos in the judgment of publishers; nonetheless Wilson and Serber’s book was adopted to provided the view point of women that aided in the development of the atomic bomb.

Women Scientist and the Atomic Bomb

Women that participated in the creation of the Atomic bomb directly were few; about twenty women were scientist in Los Alamos.[1] In 1944 Los Alamos’s labor force consisted of thirty percent women, approximately 200 workers.  Only a reader with a specific interest in nuclear science or of the atomic bomb may observe the rare mention of a women contributing to the atomic bomb, yet there are over twenty women scientist working in Los Alamos, a city responsible for developing that atomic bomb.  There were several scientists working on the Atomic bomb in Los Alamos, but very few breakthroughs that were noted due to the secrecy of the Manhattan Project; thus, many discoveries were hindered to the public until after the World War was over. 

Leona Woods, one of the most eminent scientists at Hanford, Washington; she was a physicist who had worked with Enrico Fermi in Chicago during the first nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.[2] Woods situation is what Ruth Sime states women who worked with male collaborators was an arrangement that gave them a chance to work but tended to obscure their contributions.[3]  Yellin also states that a few Women Army Corps with scientific qualifications also served on Los Alamos.[4] Women that worked with a man scientist were doomed to live in the shadow of the male scientist, and historians perpetuate this theory as they are reluctant to bring women out of context of their role during the time.  Mary Lucy Miller was the head of one of the Chemistry Labs at Los Alamos, [5] is an example of a woman chemist that research and efforts have been suffered the effect of historian reluctant to research women scientist as explained my Sime

Maria Goeppert-Mayer was a mathematics major that changed to physics after listening to the lectures of Max Born, eventually joined the scientists in the Manhattan Project that worked within the shadow of another male scientist, Edward Teller.  Goeppert-Mayer responsibility was to separate the isotope uranium-235 from uranium-238;[6] this was the key in making the fuel for the first atomic bomb that was drop on Hiroshima. Goeppert-Mayer states that after the first bombs were dropped, “she was relieved that her part in the development had been very minor.”[7] This statement proposes that a role so critical to making the atomic bomb possible is taken minor, a representation of a woman’s subordination to a male dominated field.  Goeppert-Mayer dealt with the obstacles in her career partly by identifying with men at an early age and by disregarding the expectations of the society in which she lived.[8]  Goeppert-Mayer is one of two women to receive the Nobel Prize for the shell model of the nucleus.

Many women scientist lived in the shadow of male scientist, Marie Curie lived in her husband’s shadow, but manage to stay respected among the scientific and historical community.  Marie and her husband, Pierre, worked intensely for their accomplishments. “With rare persistence and skill Marie sat, day after day, in front of her equipment.  She moved only when her back hurt. Her process is even tedious to describe…” [9] This display of determination is what allowed Marie Curie to be respected among the historic community. Marie Curie’s accomplishments were many, the phenomenon was by no means the property of uranium alone, and it became necessary to give it a distinct name.  Mme Curie suggested the name of radioactivity.[10] The further discoveries can be partially attributed to Pierre Curie for he followed with passionate interest; he had frequently helped her by his remarks and advice.[11] Later the Curie’s indicated the existence of two new [radioactive] elements in pitchblende…which was called polonium.[12] In December 26, 1898 the Curie’s communications read, “The various reason we have just enumerated lead us to believe that the new radioactive substance contains a new element to which we propose to give the name of RADIUM. The new radioactive substance certainly contains a very strong proportion of barium; in spite of that its radioactivity is considerable.  The radioactivity of radium therefore must be enormous.”[13] Marie Curie’s doctorial study on quantifying radio activity ended up being a collaborative effort with her husband, who collected more attention giving that he is the more known scientist.  Marie Curie continued to treat, kilogram by kilogram, pitchblende tediously separating the radium every day for four years.  Forty-five months after the day which the Curies announced the probable existence of radium, Marie Curie finally carried off the victory in this war of attrition: she succeeded in preparing a decigram of pure radium, and made a first determination of the atomic weight of the new substance, which was 225.[14] This diligent work from Marie made all chemists bow to her discovery, for that it met that officially Radium existed.

Lise Meitner, a scientist widely known for her part in the discovery in nuclear fission, which made nuclear power possible, as well as the atomic bomb.[15]  Meitner’s contribution to nuclear fission explained the processes that explained a nuclear reaction, thus allowing one to determine a means to control a nuclear reaction.  Early on Meitner worked in Freitag and discovered that among the nearly one million alpha tracks in some three thousand clod chamber photographs, there were a few hundred tracks with two distinct ranges that were each considerable longer than the normal alpha ranges from ThC to ThC`.[16] This discovery revealed that alpha emission was not absolutely mono-energetic, a fact that had suspected for some time.  Rutherford and George Gamow expanded on her work and later and found gamma radiation. In the years of 1932 and 1933, Meitner investigated beta-gamma spectra, alpha particle fine structure, cosmology, gamma scatter and the Klein-Nishina formula, neutrons, and positrons.  Her work spanned almost all of experimental nuclear physics; she had the equipment, resources, and co-workers to quickly step in as each amazing new finding was announced.”[17] Meitner was constantly contributing to the nuclear physics but this was during 1933 German, and Meitner being Jewish had to emigrate. “In reflection of the political situations in Germany, this forced Lise Meitner to think about many things that had nothing to do with physics.”[18]  The circumstances of Meitner’s emigration to Sweden in 1938 made her lose her work, position, and her scientific reputation.  Otto Hahn, Meitner’s closes friend, has very little credited to her science. In a letter she wrote to Hahn:

Now I want to write something personal, which disturbs me and which I ask you to read with our more than 40-year friendship in mind, and with the desire to understand me. In the report of the MPG there is a reference to a lecture I gave in Berlin and I am referred to as the “longtime Mitarbeiter of our president [Hahn]… Try for once to imagine yourself in my place! What would you say if you wree only characterized as the “longtime Mitarbeiter” of me? After the last 15 years, which I wouldn’t wish on any good friend, shall my scientific past also be taken from me? Is that fair? And why is it happening?[19]

This strengthens Sime’s theory that women that work in collaboration with men, often get their work devalued. “In Sweden there was no general sympathy for refugees from Nazi Germany: the country was small, with a weak economy and no immigrant tradition, and would not change appreciably until the middle of the war when it became that Germany would not win.”[20]  Shows how the forced emigration would exclude her from fission and her poor relationship with Siegbahn hinder her work in physics.  The only contact Meitner had with fission was letters from her best friends describing the breakthroughs happening in their laboratory.  From her theory of fission she concludes:

“When two drops separated they would be driven apart by their mutual electric repulsion and would acquire a very large energy, about 200 MeV in all; where would this energy come from? …Whenever mass disappears energy is created, according to Einstein’s formula E= mc² and one-fifth of a proton mass was just equivalent to 200 MeV.  So here was the source for all that energy; it all fitted!”[21] 

Meitner found out the energy source that would be harnessed to make the atomic bomb, although Leo Szilard realized that this energy could be used as a weapon, his discovery of this idea is more popular with historians during this time period, for the Atomic Bombs were a brooding idea of military minds and ultimately were used on Japanese cities with horrific success.

When it came to Otto Hahn’s record he would always understates Strassmann’s analytical chemistry, and never fail to repeat that physics deemed fission impossible; thereby delaying the discovery of fission.[22] With Otto Hahn claiming most of the credit of Lise Meitner and her teams discoveries, suggest at an attempt to erase her from the history of nuclear physics.  It took twenty-four years for Meitner to be heard in the scientific community again by placing the uranium investigation in its physics context. The damage done by Otto Hahn was so great that it took a theoretical physicist Siegfried Flugge to review the physics behind fission.

When in Sweden Meitner learned the Swedish language and built a small research group of her own.  Meitner published several brief short papers describing some new radioactive species formed with the help of cyclotron.[23] Meitner initially felt that there would be a chance to move to Britain, which she would had prefer, but Oxford Lindermann had the reputation of being unsympathetic to women, and from Cam bridge there was such a lukewarm response that she did not thing it was worth following up.[24] Meitner suffered several forms of prejudice, first off she was Jewish in Nazi Germany, and mostly as a woman, as men scientist would claim her ideas and institutes would refuse her entry.

Women as Direct Assistance to Scientist

Within the Manhattan Project the scientist were not the only important roles to make the atomic bomb a success, many were supporting staff that were directly assisting the scientist. 

Charlotte Serber held on of these important positions at Los Alamos as the Scientific Librarian.  She was in charge not only of reference books but also top-secret documents concerning the work being done.[25] This job was critical in maintaining the secrecy of Los Alamos to the public and for assisting scientist with materials that were needed. Other wives to scientist usually picked up jobs as clerical work or secretaries, a fairly typical job for women, “but there was one chief worry. Could she manage her home here on the mesa and work too? Would her home life suffer? Would her husband be neglected?  Would her children become delinquents? Would it be any more difficult than working a forty-eight-hour week in a city?”[26]  This concern coming from Serber instills to the reader that despite the war effort going on in Los Alamos, women were still suppose to maintain their duties as a woman to the household, subjugating women to subordinate role of men.  Looking at the history, unless a woman in a position had direct connection with a scientist she had little hope in being recognized in her duties.  Many women such as Serber found the tech area anything but conventional.  Everything was new and different and frantic.[27] Serber did her job well and did what she was told, maintaining the secrecy of Los Alamos and providing scientist with their reference materials as the scientific Librarian.

The tech area in Los Alamos consisted of wives of young physicists and chemists. The force of social pressure and the obvious need for all the hands, trained or untrained, brought most of them rapidly onto the payroll.  They came mostly as secretaries, typist, or clerks.  Some came as technicians, librarians, computers, or draftsmen, and very few as scientist.[28]  Suggests that Los Alamos did not intend to recruit a large number of women at first, but it turned out that wives were willing to work.  These women become the framework that was to hold Los Alamos together, and provide the scientist with the assistance need to commit to their work and allow the government to maintain the self-sufficient town of secrecy.

            Women Army Corps provided many scientists with assistants for they provided extra bodies to fill in positions that would be normally be taken by men.  “More than 400 Women Army Corps served on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; New York City; and Los Alamos.  Most worked as clerks and drivers, but some were also scientist and took on responsibility in the labs.”[29]  Yellin gives an approximation of how many women that served in the labs as assistants to scientist throughout the Manhattan Project.  The Women Army Corps were mostly assigned cleric jobs, giving them the image of just glorified secretaries to a secret project of America.  The largest movement for women on the home front, Women Army Corps, was also cast in the shadow of men’s work on the Manhattan Project sites.

Women as support roles of the Manhattan Project

Women took clerical jobs or other domestic jobs that were critical to the operation of these secrete facilities. These positions were teachers, town council members, secretaries and various other positions that were needed to make these secrete cities function. 

Alice Smith a member of the town council and history teacher at Los Alamos participated in the magnificent powers that embodied the Town Council of the Mesa.[30]  At first the Town Council of Los Alamos failed due to compromise of military authority, but later when civilian cooperation was needed, the military leaders sought to appease to the citizens with the Town Council again.  A representative from the Post Command was required to attend and provided a bridge between the military and civilian populations.  This was necessary because bylaws and election rules were always changing; as reliance on the council was intermediary increased, it tried to make itself more fully representative.[31] The council was critical to bringing together educated scientist and military administration together, and a chance to allow women to play in this critical role.  The atomic bomb might not yet have been completed without the framework provided by the military we are well aware, but the civilians who have left Los Alamos are sure that they prefer to live permanently under that clumsier system represented by the spontaneous, if at times unproductive, leadership of the Town Council.[32]

The town council covered issues in Los Alamos from social gatherings, housing issues, food problems, and maid services.  The later was necessary so women can contribute to the work of the atomic bomb if they had held a position with a scientist.  “Hanni Brescher, a mathematician trained to deal with more abstruse topics, applier herself to setting up categories.  To distinguish between a full-time, a two-thirds-time, or half-time working woman was simple, but was one two-year-old male equal in wear, tear, and washing to two five- and seven-year-old females?”[33] The demand to provide in house assistance to working women was extremely high, for that most women had down some sort of job to assist the community. The town council could on make recommendations to the military administration; it was scarcely a potent force. However, it was the necessary outlet for steam when things became too impossible. It did a great deal of good, too.  Particularly in the beginning, elections were attended by considerable excitement.[34] Reveals the necessity of the council by providing a connection between civilians and military that was often an outlet for the civilians to understand the military post setting.

            One job that had to be filled, giving the nature of these facilities, were teaching positions.  According to Marshak the teaching staff for the large elementary section and the small high school section was recruited form women already on the hill whenever possible.[35] Jane S Wilson and Charlie Masters were both teachers, English and Spanish respectively.  When it came to maid service women who taught school had priority, for if they stayed home with a sick child it created more general dislocation than the absence of one laboratory assistant.[36]  Wilson opinion of teachers can be regarded as exalted, but the actions of the council reinforce the importance of having teachers at Los Alamos.

            Ruth Marshak, another teacher at Los Alamos and worked in the housing offices.  She recounts the social cleavage between the military and the scientific personal and the scientist positions on an army post.

            As stated by Yellin, more than a hundred were nurses, teachers, secretaries or clerks;[37] all critical to maintain Los Alamos as a functioning research town.  For a town to survive and maintain itself from the outside normal word, it had to vastly self-sufficient and provide the public services that were required to perpetuate themselves.  Wives that travelled with their husband found themselves being employed by Los Alamos to fulfill such jobs.  If the wives were unwilling to perform such task, the delay to employ such people may of lead to an bloody evasion on Japan.

            One of the most powerful and influential women that worked in Los Alamos was Dorothy McKibbin, admirer of Oppenheimer, his secretary and gatekeeper to Los Alamos.  “She became known as Oppenheimer’s loyal recruit, his most inspired hire, and the indispensable head of the Sante Fe office.”[38] Is Conant’s description of McKibbin’s work ethic, which Oppenheimer was attracted to when he interviewing her.  She would become one of few civilians with security clearance and would come to know everyone involved in the Manhattan Project. 

            McKibbin was surprised at her position as she found it somewhat unbelievable that all these top-notch scientist would need her assistance.[39] As scientist arrived in Santa Fe, McKibbin would be the first person they would come into contact with, and her calm demeanor would allow her to take control of the pandemonium.  Everything at Los Alamos was need-to-know, and McKibbin happened to know every road, pueblo, village, rancher, shopkeeper, carpenter, and craftsman for miles around.  McKibbin was far more valuable than any secretary, providing a reliable research to the atomic bomb research.

            McKibbin’s was handed a second kind of task, and this would be the several civil and domestic problem solving activities Oppenheimer would assign to her frequently.  “Invariable, one of the bus drivers would be given a summons for blocking the road and creating a Hazard if the fire trucks needed to pass in a hurry. Worst yet, the physicists, many of whom came from abroad and were always driving on the wrong side of the road, would be ticketed and would come into her office waving their hands and protesting loudly. Dorothy would then have to trot round to the local magistrate… plead with him to tear up the tickets and set things right with the town authorities.”[40] Examples how McKibbin’s natural ability to solve problems but her initiative and passion she had to the development of the Manhattan Project. 

            Oppenheimer relied on Dorothy to deal with the more disgruntled wives—to listen to their troubles and sorrows, provide sound advice, and find ways to make their life at Los Alamos a little easier.[41]  McKibbin not only provided advice to disgruntled wives and civil disputes but she was the projects unofficial den mother.  “She reassured skittish young faculty wives, who had never spent a day in the wilderness before, that there was little change they would find a rattle snake in their shoe, and promised that the project’s tall fences would keep out the coyotes they herd howling at night…She told them the Rio Grande was usually too muddy to swim in, but the cool Santa Cruz Reservoir was less than a hour’s drive and would make a nice Sunday outing.”[42] Mc was also the only name that outside banks would accept endorsements on checks with, McKibbin’s role to women would be a tactical one that Oppenheimer would assign to keep the wives happy, and in turn keep the scientist at Los Alamos.

            McKibbin was also chosen by Oppenheimer to help brighten the atmosphere of Los Alamos, as people left her office with greater cheer than with they entered.  “McKibbin was warm, steady, and understanding and helped people come around to the idea that as a war time assignment, Los Alamos was not the worst place to be.”[43] Mckibbin naturally calmed the women down in Los Alamos, keeping more and more scientist contempt with their assignment at Los Alamos.

            Even after the creation of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, McKibbin maintained her role as a go-between, and send word that two dozen scientist and their wives had been invited to a  diner, and posting sign-up sheets on the bulletin board of the ALAS office.[44] Her attitude and demeanor would forever remember as the forefront of Los Alamos, her name would synonymous with 109 East Palace

Women responsible for security

The secrecy of Los Alamos provided several women with the potential to leak this out to other sources.  McKibbin was probably the biggest risk of a potential leak, as she had the most outside contact than anybody within Los Alamos as she was the gatekeeper for both.  The thought never crossed McKibbin for her, when Fuchs admitted; she was frustrated at his betrayal. McKibbin screened, fingerprinted, and issued passes to the dozens of pueblo women and men who served on the Hill as maids and janitors, waitresses and cooks.” [45] Is a demonstration McKibbin’s role as a security personnel and her connection to the outside.  McKibbin also help screened hundreds of applicants, some of whom had packed their families into trailers and traveled across the state on the rumor of good wages.[46] McKibbin was definitely a very useful person for Los Alamos, since she had to do with everything and everything that had to go to and from the city.

Women accounts often mention of the tenacious rules that were in place of for security of Los Alamos. Jane Wilson accounts when she had met an acquaintance from college; she recalled that even her situation was against the rules.[47]  Wilson unaware of this causal offer to have Coke by her acquaintance was violating the security rules, went anyways. “A moments’s slip and I,by nature labbermouth, felet that I would find myself hurtling into the graping entrance to hell.  It was relief to say goodbye.  Then, like a child confessing that she had been naughty, I reported my social engagement to the Security Officer.  Living at Los Alamos was something like living in jail.” [48]Another security measure that Yellin accounts for was the changing of the title scientist to engineers.  “The most famous of the scientist had to use false name and have bodyguards when they traveled outside of Los Alamos.” [49]  Women of Los Alamos tend to see the security measures as interesting, but still abided by them.  Women provided a large security risk in the vision of the government, but these women used a lot of composure and discipline in their everyday lives to preserve the secrecy of Los Alamos.

Maintaining the secrecy of Los Alamos was serious to Oppenheimer, he would send out women to make up rumors in Santa Fe.  He was concerned of the loud booms that Santa Feans were beginning to hear in the mornings, and he wanted Charlotte Serber to spread the rumber that they were testing an electric rocket.  Serber accounts specific directions from Oppenheimer:

Talk. Talk too much. Talk as if you had too many drinks. Get people to eavesdrop. Say a number of things about us that you are not supposed to. Say the place is growning. Finally, and I don’t care how you manage it; say we are building an electric rocket. No one is to be told of this assignment.  If you are successful, you will be reported on in Santa Fe and by other Los Aalamosites who overhear you. You will be protected if you get into troupe, but for the moment it is a secret mission.

            Serber went out and did this, but only to fail miserably at spreading the rumor.  This shows how Oppenheimer felt about women and their ability to gossip, but also the trust he had with giving her this secret mission. Her counterespionage soon was forgotten, but there was still plenty to do. 

            Laura Fermi, wife of Enrico Fermi, worked part-time in the Tech Area and was aware of her husband’s work, although, like everyone else, she and her husband did not discuss much of what he did at Los Alamos until after the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima.[50] “Women wanted to know. Everything. At once. But many things could not be said even then, cannot be said now… Their first bewilderment turned into immense pride in their husbands’ achievement and, to a lesser degree, in their own share in the project.”[51] Is the reaction Enrico Fermi had felt from the wives of Los Alamos, he even noticed how women had a significant impact in providing and developing the atomic bomb.

            Phyllis Fisher was aware of all the security measure going around, but she was unaware of why they were in place.  She thought some policies were strange and unnecessary as that only a few members of the Manhattan Project knew that they were building the Atomic Bomb.  In a dinner conversation that took her husband’s reaction to her by surprised.  “I asked in bantering tone, ‘Well, how about Uranium fish…?’ I never finshed finished ‘Fisher’ because a red-faced, furious Leon was roaring at me, demanding that I never use that word again.”[52] 

Jane Wilson, one of the first wives at Los Alamos, realized how important the community was, and the efforts they were working. “…We women realized that we were part of something a great deal bigger than ourselves… We were a secret project, probably the most secret project which has ever existed in the United States.  That one fact dominated our existence.”[53] This great project employing many women, Wilson noticed that women provided for it and she still felt the women’s role was insignificant.  The reader can attribute this to the subordinate role that women have accepted in this time.

To summarize, women played many roles in contributing to nuclear weapons during World War II.  The scientist; Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer, all made revolutionary discoveries on the physics that made the atomic bomb possible.  Unfortunately circumstances for Meitner she could not publically announce her discoveries, while Curie and Goeppert-Mayer worked with male collaborators that received most of the credit for their works.  Many other women, mostly wives and women army corps, provided the necessary support staff to assist the many scientist that were assigned to the Manhattan Project.  These women were the frame work that scientist lacked to keep the project a success.  Other women often picked up the jobs within Los Alamos to maintain secrecy by keeping Los Alamos self-sustaining.  These women picked up jobs such as secretaries, town council members, and as teacher, filling all the necessary positions that were normally taken by men or scientist.  This established Los Alamos as a city.  The upmost important objective of the Manhattan Project besides creating the atomic bomb was security, which Dorothy McKibbin and other women help maintained with their counterespionage, security screening, and excising their self discipline.  All of these roles have been the integrated with the making of the Atomic Bomb to make it successful are just as important as the scientist the physics and chemistry together to make the atomic bomb, which eventually and ultimately ended World War II.

Bibliography

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

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

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

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

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

Wilson, Jane. STANDING BY AND MAKING DO Women of Wartime Los Alamos. New Mexico: The Los Alamos Historical Society, 1988.

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