Atomic Women by Roseanne Montillo
Author:Roseanne Montillo [Montillo, Roseanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2019-09-17T00:00:00+00:00
In 1939, Leona and the rest of the group had attended several seminars held by the university on nuclear fission and a range of similar topics, including methods of separating isotopes. She believed the school would continue to organize such lectures, but as the months wore on, these subjects became classified, and scientists were urged not to publish information or even talk about these matters as part of a lecture series. The information given to the students became scantier and scantier. The students noticed this development, talked about it, and wondered why it was occurring.
Aside from being the director of the Chicago lab, Arthur Compton was also a dean in the physics department, and one of the perks of the job was the freedom to get office space and materials for his students, especially laboratory space for those who worked for him, and thus he was very well liked. The physics department shared Eckhart Hall with the math department, but it soon outgrew its space, and Compton pushed the math department to move out, whereupon he barricaded the hall and had it guarded; its doors were eventually sealed, and an armed guard was even posted outside.
Leona observed everything occurring around her with interest. For the third time, she was rewriting her thesis, which Dr. Mulliken was supervising, and while she tried to concentrate on her work, the construction occurring around her also caught her attention. Everything intrigued her, and the secrecy made her wonder.
Compton was considered an extremely good-looking man, who worked hard to keep himself in shape by playing many rounds of tennis and walking several times a day. He was gracious and had the capacity to overlook defects in people. He often invited coworkers and students to his home, and several of the students ended up renting the third floor of the large house where he lived with his wife, Betty. One of the renters included the physicist John Marshall.
Leona had noticed John Marshall at the start of the semester, while deeply involved in her molecular spectroscopy work. John was a scientist, Leona Woods knew, with an intriguing mix of intelligence, interesting looks, and geekiness. Maybe it was because most people described her—a tall young woman with pale skin and an odd hairdo—in similar terms that she felt a connection to him. She learned through some intense inquiries that John was a staff member in Enrico Fermi’s laboratory.
These scientists had joined the Substitute Alloy Materials Laboratory when it was originally established at Columbia University; when the Metallurgical Laboratory was established at the University of Chicago, the scientists had moved to Chicago. Leona knew that Leo Szilard, Walter Zinn, Herbert Anderson, and Edward Teller were also involved. The laboratory was so new that she watched as more equipment arrived daily. Because the staff didn’t have enough supplies, most of them resorted to helping themselves to whatever materials—glue, pliers, and tweezers—they needed from other departments, promising to return them but never doing so. Leona eventually became the leader of this
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