Chemist's Role in the Birth of Atomic Energy

Scientists recruited to the wartime Manhattan Project raced to understand atomic energy and its power to end World War II. American chemist Charles Coryell recorded his reminiscences for Columbia University Oral History Research Center in 1960, including his education in southern California and Nazi Germany in 1933-4, research at Chicago and Oak Ridge, his post-war career at MIT, and scientists' advocacy regarding atomic energy. With the discovery in 1945 of element 61, Coryell's wife declared, "Like Prometheus, you have stolen fire from the gods, and mankind may suffer for it." Hence the name promethium. In this historic source, themselves daughters of major scientific participants, Julie Coryell and Joan Bainbridge Safford reveal intimate and personal perspectives on the first development of nuclear technology.