Description:

Groves Leslie



Physicist Wheeler Thanks General Groves for Congratulations on Fermi Award

 

“I appreciate your words all the more because of the leading position which you have in the great development in which I had the privilege to take part....”

 

JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER, Typed Letter Signed, to Leslie R. Groves Jr., December 16, 1968, Princeton, NJ. 1 p., 8.5" x 11".  Very good.

 

Excerpts

“I am writing to thank you for the great honor you did me and my family to come to the reception at the John Adams Room the other day, and also to thank you for your generous words of some days earlier about the Fermi award. I appreciate your words all the more because of the leading position which you have in the great development in which I had the privilege to take part, and because I and all my colleagues have such great respect for you.”

 

“I’m delighted...that you are going to nail down for all to see the story of the lives that the Manhattan Project saved. Why not call the book ‘The Lives That Were Saved’?”

 

Historical Background

Wheeler received the Enrico Fermi Award in 1968 for his contributions to nuclear science. Created by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1956 and now administered by the United States Department of Energy, the Fermi Award honors scientists for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. The Atomic Energy Commission specifically cited Wheeler’s “pioneering contributions to understanding nuclear physics, nuclear fission, and to developing the technology of plutonium production reactors, and his continuing broad contributions to nuclear science.” President Lyndon B. Johnson presented the award to Wheeler at a ceremony at the White House on December 2, 1968, the 26th anniversary of the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.

 

Wheeler had a personal interest in the lives that were saved by the use of the atomic bomb. His younger brother Joe was fighting with the American forces in Italy in 1944 and sent Wheeler a postcard with the simple message, “Hurry up.” It was too late; his brother was killed in October 1944. Wheeler later wrote that they were so close to developing a nuclear weapon to end the war that he always thought that the war could have been over in October 1944.

 

Although Groves seems to have been working on another book about the Manhattan Project and the decision to drop the atomic bomb, he never published another book beyond Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, first published in 1962.

 

 

John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) was born in Florida and received his doctorate in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1933. He joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1938 and remained there until 1976. During the 1930s, he worked with Niels Bohr to explain the basic principles behind nuclear fission. During World War II, he worked with the Manhattan Project’s Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, where he helped design nuclear reactors and helped DuPont build them. Although he returned to Princeton at the end of the war, he helped design and build the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s. From 1976 to 1986, Wheeler was director of the Center for Theoretical Physics as the University of Texas at Austin.

 

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.

 

 



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