Description:

Truman Harry


Harry Truman, who Ended WWII by Dropping the Bomb, Appoints a Nuclear Physicist and Former Manhattan Project Scientist, who Just a Few Years Before, had Proposed the Electromagnetic Methods that Were Used to Enrich Early Samples of U-235 Used in Work on the Atomic Bomb


Partly-printed Document Signed, "Harry Truman," as President, 1 page, 23" x 19", Washington, May 21, 1949, appointing "Henry De Wolf Smyth of New Jersey," as "a Member of the Atomic Energy Commission for the remainder of the term expiring June 30, 1950…" Countersigned, "James E. Webb," as Acting Secretary of State. With an intact paper seal of affixed at lower left. A few very mild creases, else extremely fine condition.


The recipient, Henry De Wolf Smyth (1898-1986), was an accomplished physicist and diplomat. Smyth received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Princeton, and was a member of the university's faculty for much of his career. During the Second World War he was a member of the National Defense Research Committee (1941-1943) where he proposed the electromagnetic methods that were used to enrich early samples of U-235 used in early work on the atomic bomb. From 1943 to 1945 he was a consultant to the Manhattan Project heading research on heavy water while also serving as director of the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory. In 1945, in the wake of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he authored A General Account of the Development of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (popularly known as the "Smyth Report") which was the first official, public account of the development of the atomic bomb.


In 1949, Harry Truman nominated Smyth to become a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. Following the first successful Soviet atomic test the same year, he argued against Truman's proposal to pursue the hydrogen bomb. He resigned from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954 over Lewis Strauss' campaign to revoke Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance, despite his personal antipathy toward the former head of the Manhattan Project. In 1961, John F. Kennedy appointed Smyth the United States Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, where he played a crucial role in the adoption of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970. He retired from the IAEA the same year, but remained active in public affairs, most notably in his opposition to Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Imitative (a.k.a. "Star Wars"), calling instead for joint reductions in nuclear arms stockpiles.



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