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Lot 24
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J. Chadwick, Discoverer of Neutrons, to L. Groves on Manhattan Project, Highly Important ALS of Nobel Prize Winner
J. Chadwick, Discoverer of Neutrons, to L. Groves on Manhattan Project, Highly Important ALS of Nobel Prize Winner
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Description:

Chadwick James



J. Chadwick, Discoverer of Neutrons, to L. Groves on Manhattan Project, Highly Important ALS of Nobel Prize Winner - “I wonder how many of them realise how much Fermi owed to the Manhattan Project—to you—not in ideas but in time and facilities.”

 

Autograph Letter Signed, to Leslie R. Groves Jr., January 1, 1968, Denbigh, Wales. 2 pp., 8" x 10".  With Groves Typed Draft with autograph emendations, to Chadwick, n.d. (ca. January 1968). 3 pp., 8.375" x 11". Stapled, with some paper clip marks in upper margin; very good.

 

Excerpts

Chadwick to Groves:

“We should of course have been delighted to see you last autumn but we did not expect that you would be able to find the time for such a journey or to tear yourself away from your family. We treasure the recollection of your visit to us, which gave us such pleasure. It was so kind of you & Mrs Groves to make the tedious journey to this remote spot.”

 

“I hope that you had a pleasant and interesting visit to Chicago with the ‘old timers’ as you call them. I wonder how many of them realise how much Fermi owed to the Manhattan Project—to you—not in ideas but in time and facilities. You will have missed Robert Oppenheimer. I had a long and friendly letter from him about a month before he died, in which he admitted that he was having little success in his battle with his cancerous throat. How sad it is to lose one’s friends. And I have lost many in the last few years. But I can look back on their friendship with pleasure, notwithstanding my regrets, and remember only the happy times.”

 

Groves to Chadwick:

“the sight of your house and the luncheon with you is one of our most pleasant English memories. I do hope that for your sake as well as mine that you will be able to find a suitable flat in Cambridge as that would make it possible for you to see many more people who would enjoy seeing you.”

 

“The Fermi celebration in Chicago was not only interesting but was extremely enjoyable. The passage of time has erased many of the minor animosities which existed in the war days. I would add that this process has been greatly assisted by the present responsibilities of many of what were then very young men. On at least three occasions men who had been rather difficult to handle came up to me and said that now twenty-five years later they realized what a job it is to run a program involving a lot of people, some of them just as tempermental as they had been.”

 

“I too miss Robert Oppenheimer. While we did not see much of each other in recent years we talked at times over the phone about matters where advice or information was needed from one or the other. He was always most cooperative in everything I asked him to do and I had never had any doubt in my mind as to the genuineness of his feelings.”

 

Historical Background

British physicist James Chadwick first visited the Manhattan Project facilities in November 1943 and developed a surprisingly close working relationship with Manhattan Project director Major General Leslie Groves. Chadwick became the only man besides Groves and his second in command to have access to all American research and production facilities for the uranium bomb. He moved to Los Alamos in early 1944 with his family. Working with Groves, Chadwick placed British scientists in many parts of the project to facilitate post-war British nuclear weapons development.

 

In 1949, at a dinner with American physicist Edward Teller, Chadwick told Teller that Groves “understood the overriding importance of the project better than some of the leading American scientists.” “Without Groves,” Chadwick concluded, “the scientists could never have built the bomb.” Teller included this anecdote in an introduction to a 1982 reprint of Groves’s memoir Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, originally published in 1962.

 

On December 2, 1942, forty-two scientists and technicians created the first controlled nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. On December 2-3, 1967, approximately 250 scientists and other dignitaries, including Manhattan Project director General Leslie R. Groves Jr., convened at the University of Chicago to commemorate the anniversary. President Lyndon B. Johnson presented a speech by satellite from Washington in which he offered to open all U.S. nuclear facilities, except those used for military weapons, for international inspection in an attempt to reduce the risk of a nuclear war. The festivities also included the unveiling of the sculpture “Nuclear Energy” by British sculptor Henry Moore on the University of Chicago campus.  Among key persons not present was J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had died on February 18, 1967.

 

 

James Chadwick (1891-1974) was born in England and graduated from the University of Manchester in 1911. He received further education in Germany but was placed in an internment camp during World War I, where he continued his experiments. He received a Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1921. In 1932, he discovered the neutron, for which he won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics. During World War II, Chadwick wrote the report that inspired the U.S. government to develop an atomic bomb. He carried out research as part of the Tube Alloys project to build an atomic bomb. After the Quebec Agreement of August 1943 merged the American and British atomic bomb research, Chadwick led the British team on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and Washington, D.C. After the war, he served as the British scientific adviser to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. From 1948 to 1958, he served as Master of Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge.

 

Leslie R. Groves Jr. (1896-1970) was a United States Army General with the Corps of Engineers who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. Born in New York to a Protestant pastor who became an army chaplain, Groves graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1918 in a course shortened because of World War I. He entered the Corps of Engineers and gained promotions to major by 1940. In 1941, he was charged with overseeing the construction of the Pentagon, the largest office building in the world, with more than five million square feet. Disappointed that he had not received a combat assignment, Groves instead took charge of the Manhattan Project, designed to develop an atomic bomb. He continued nominally to supervise the Pentagon project to avoid suspicion, gained promotion to brigadier general, and began his work in September 1942. The project headquarters was initially in the War Department building in Washington, but in August 1943, moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer selected the site in Los Alamos, New Mexico, for a laboratory, and Groves pushed successfully for Oppenheimer to be placed in charge. Groves was in charge of obtaining critical uranium ores internationally and collecting military intelligence on Axis atomic research. Promoted to major general in March 1944, Groves received the Distinguished Service Medal for his work on the Manhattan Project after the war. In 1947, Groves became chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. He received a promotion to lieutenant general in January 1948, just days before meeting with Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower, who reviewed a long list of complaints against Groves. Assured that he would not become Chief of Engineers, Groves retired in February 1948. From 1948 to 1961, he was a vice president of Sperry Rand, an equipment and electronics firm. After retirement, he served as president of the West Point alumni association and wrote a book on the Manhattan Project, published in 1962.


Ex. Leslie Groves Family, Christies Auction.

 

 



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