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Lost Women of the Manhattan Project

During World War II, thousands of scientists and engineers worked on the Manhattan project, the top secret push to develop an atomic bomb that would end the war. Two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did just that, while also killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. The devastating potential of nuclear weapons sparked a moral controversy that continues to this day. Hundreds of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were women. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you a few of their stories.
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This podcast is distributed by PRX and published in partnership with Scientific American. Our art is made by Paula Mangin.

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Trailer: Lost Women of the Manhattan Project

Thousands of scientists worked on the Manhattan project, the top secret push to develop an atomic bomb that would end World War II. Hundreds of those scientists were women.

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One of Many Lost Women of the Manhattan Project: Leona Woods Marshall Libby

Just 23 years old and armed with a Ph.D., Leona Woods joined Enrico Fermi as he led a team working to produce the world's first successful nuclear chain reaction.

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Blood, Sweat, and Fears: The Story of Floy Agnes Lee, the Young Woman who Collected blood from Manhattan Project scientists

Aggie Lee, a young indigenous woman from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, began working on the Manhattan Project in 1945. Her job: to monitor scientists' blood for excessive radiation exposure. Yet she didn't know that she was contributing to the building of the atomic bomb. Years later, she blamed the radiation for a series of cancer deaths in her family.

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No Place for a Woman in Mathematics? The Woman Who Ended up Supervising The Computations that Proved an Atomic Bomb Would Work

Naomi Livesay supervised the mechanical computing operation at Los Alamos and worked on computations that formed the mathematical basis for implosion simulations. Despite her crucial role on the project, she has rarely been mentioned as more than a footnote. Until now.

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The Story of the Real Lilli Hornig, the Only Female Scientist Named in the Film Oppenheimer

Lilli Hornig is the only female scientist mentioned by name in the film Oppenheimer. Here's the story of the real Lilli Hornig.

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Meet the Physicist who Spoke Out Against the Bomb She Helped Create

Kay Way was a nuclear physicist who was an expert in radioactive decay. After working on the atomic bomb she became an outspoken opponent of nuclear weapons.

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Their Day in the Sun: The Book That Shone a Light on the Lost Women of the Manhattan Project

As part of our Lost Women of the Manhattan Project special series, we pay tribute to physicists Ruth Howes and Caroline Herzenberg, whose ten-year research project ensured a place in history for the female scientists, engineers and technicians who worked on the atomic bomb.

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Why Did Lise Meitner Never Receive the Nobel Prize for Splitting the Atom?

New translations of Meitner’s letters show that antisemitism before and after World War II robbed Meitner of the 1944 Nobel Prize that went to her long-time collaborator chemist Otto Hahn.

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Part 2: Why Did Lise Meitner Never Receive the Nobel Prize for Splitting the Atom?

In the aftermath of the discovery of nuclear fission, letters exchanged between Lise Meitner and the chemist Otto Hahn reveal how she struggled with the betrayal of Hahn, her long-time scientific collaborator, who failed not only to credit her for her work but also to condemn the Nazi atrocities.

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Best Of: Meet the Physicist who Spoke Out Against the Bomb She Helped Create

Days after Oppenheimer won big at the Oscars, we look at the life and scientific contributions of nuclear physicist Kay Way, who worked on the Manhattan Project but ended up rallying fellow scientists to oppose the use of nuclear weapons.

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