Their mission: develop an atomic weapon before Nazi Germany. General Leslie R. Groves selected J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist from the University of California at Berkeley, as the scientific project director. This unprecedented undertaking required revolutionary science, engineering, technological innovation, and collaboration between civilians and military personnel from diverse backgrounds.
"These photos are an important part of the Lab’s past. The Manhattan Project was the start of the Lab we know today. Plus, that workforce was the first to dedicate themselves to our national security mission."
- NSRC Senior Historian Alan Carr
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a recent large-scale restoration project yielded about 1.4 million of them — not to mention a lot of refreshed faces.
The badge photos of more than 1,400 of the Lab’s Manhattan Project workers, including our most-famous scientists J. Robert Oppenheimer, Emilio Segrè, and others had 75-plus years of built-up grime on them. Adhesive tape residue, bits of mounting materials, and environmental filth, like dust, caused many of these historic images to discolor...
Read more Before and after: Newly restored badge photos from the Lab’s original workforce
