Chadwick James
James Chadwick, Discoverer of Neutron, Congratulates Groves on Atomic Pioneer Award



JAMES CHADWICK, Autograph Letter Signed, to Leslie R. Groves Jr., April 6, 1970, Cambridge, England. 2 pp., 8" x 10".  Very good.



Excerpts
“Thank you for sending me a copy of the Presidential Document describing the presentation of the Atomic Pioneer Award to you, Bush and Conant. This makes clear to me what I had not properly realized, that the Award was a very special one and quite different from the great number of other awards made by the A.E.C. in the past, and that it is made once for all to recognize the unique services of Bush, Conant and yourself—what some of your compatriots regarded as the ‘unholy trinity.’”


“You must not expect me to agree wholly with your statement that B. and C. were the first to realize that the bomb might be made in time to be used during the war. I realized this in the early spring of 1941. I had no one to talk to, and the possible consequences caused me great anxiety. My doctor put me on sleeping pills, which I have used every night since that time. Our report was not presented until July 1941, and, although it was accepted, it became quite clear to me that the project was too big to be undertaken in this country during the war.”


“All honour to Bush and Conant for their courage not only in starting the project but also in realizing its magnitude and in recognizing that it should be put under the Army Engineers and finally yourself. The real job was to produce the materials in sufficient quantity, at least that was my view long before we met in the autumn of 1943. And then I soon realized how much depended on you and your judgment. Some day I must tell you what I thought about Los Alamos and one or two other aspects of the job.”


Historical Background
At a ceremony in the Oval Office on February 27, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon presented special Atomic Energy Pioneer Awards (consisting of citations and gold medals) to General Leslie R. Groves, Dr. Vannevar Bush, and Dr. James B. Conant. Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, proposed the unique awards and was present at the ceremony.


Electrical engineer Bush was the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II. Chemist Conant was president of Harvard University during the war and chaired the National Defense Research Committee. General Groves led the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.


In July 1941, Chadwick wrote the final draft of a report by the British MAUD Committee on the feasibility of a nuclear bomb. When Vannevar Bush presented this report to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in October 1941, it inspired the U.S. government to devote millions of dollars to the development of an atomic bomb. By 1942, even Chadwick recognized that the bomb could not be built in war-ravaged Britain, under constant danger from German Luftwaffe attacks, and accepted that it would have to be built in the United States.



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.

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