Research Catalog

Title

Polonium in the Playhouse : the Manhattan Project's secret chemistry work in Dayton, Ohio / Linda Carrick Thomas.

Author

Thomas, Linda Carrick, 1960-

Publication

• Columbus : Trillium, an imprint of The Ohio State University Press, [2017]
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xxi, 247 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm

Summary

"At the height of the race to build an atomic bomb, an indoor tennis court in one of the Midwest's most affluent residential neighborhoods became a secret Manhattan Project laboratory. [This work] presents the intriguing story of how this most unlikely site in Dayton, Ohio, became one of the most classified portions of the Manhattan Project. Seized by the War Department in 1944 for the bomb project, the Runnymede Playhouse was transformed into a polonium processing facility, providing a critical radioactive ingredient for the bomb initiator - the mechanism that triggered a chain reaction. With the help of a Soviet spy working undercover at the site, it was also key to the Soviet Union's atomic bomb program. The work was directed by industrial chemist Charles Allen Thomas who had been chosen by J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves to coordinate Manhattan Project chemistry and metallurgy. As one of the nation's first science administrators, Thomas was responsible for choreographing the plutonium work at Los Alamos and the Project's key laboratories. The elegant glass-roofed building belonged to his wife's family. Weaving Manhattan Project history with the life and work of the scientist, industrial leader and singing-showman Thomas, Polonium in the Playhouse offers a fascinating look at the vast and complicated program that changed world history and introduces the men and women who raced against time to build the initiator for the bomb."--Provided by publisher.

Subject

• Thomas, Charles Allen, 1900-1982
• Manhattan Project (U.S.) > History
• Polonium > History. > Dayton

Genre/Form

• Biographies
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-239) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Setting the scene -- Charles Allen Thomas-the making of an industrial leader -- Thomas & Hochwalt Laboratories and Monsanto -- U.S. science and industry prepare for war -- Birth of the Manhattan Engineer District -- Plutonium and polonium -- The Dayton Project comes to life -- Polonium purification -- Polonium in the Playhouse -- Health physics and a Soviet spy -- VE day and deadlines -- Testing the bomb at Trinity -- Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the end of the war -- Post-war.

ISBN

• 9780814213384
• 0814213383

LCCN

^^2016059022

OCLC

• 970396012
• SCSB-11516892

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library