Book ID: CBB310148077

Polonium in the Playhouse: The Manhattan Project's Secret Chemistry Work in Dayton, Ohio (2017)

unapi

Thomas, Linda Carrick (Author)


Trillium


Publication Date: 2017
Physical Details: 240 pp.
Language: English

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. Polonium in the Playhouse: The Manhattan Project's Secret Chemistry Work in Dayton, Ohio 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.

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Reviewed By

Review Nestor Herran (2018) Review of "Polonium in the Playhouse: The Manhattan Project's Secret Chemistry Work in Dayton, Ohio". Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (pp. 407-408). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB310148077/

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Authors & Contributors
Ellen D. McGehee
Dahn, Ryan
Farrell, Don A.
Chiaricati, Federico
Joseph, Timothy
Hoerlin, Bettina
Concepts
Atomic bomb
Science and war; science and the military
Manhattan Project
World War II
Physics
Cold War
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Nagasaki (Japan)
Hiroshima-shi (Japan)
Tinian (Northern Mariana Islands)
Ohio (U.S.)
Tennessee (U.S.)
Institutions
Manhattan Project National Historical Park
Radiation Effects Research Foundation
United States. Scientific Laboratory, Los Alamos
Hanford Nuclear Site (Washington)
Strategic Defense Initiative
Harvard University
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