The Medical Section of the Manhattan Project and Radiological Data Collection during Operation Crossroads
ORAL · Invited
Abstract
Veterans of the wartime Medical Section of the Manhattan Project collected radiological data from Bikini Lagoon and Atoll during Operation Crossroads. These biologists and medical doctors wielded Geiger-Muller meters and scintillation tubes to learn about radiation levels after shots Able and Baker. Their field work simultaneously looked to the past and the future. They hoped to shed light on questions that remained unanswered about how radiation effected the Hibakusha, Japanese survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They also wanted to learn about how radiation might move through an environment targeted in the unfortunate event of a future nuclear war.
Stafford Warren, the doctor in charge of the Medical Section, and Lauren Donaldson, the fisheries biologist who directed the Section’s wartime x-ray research lab at the University of Washington, led the effort. They longed to understand radiation’s movement through land and sea. Crossroads seemed to present a perfect opportunity to track radiation in the field. Such a moment had eluded them so far. Over the summer of 1946, they had access to the actual aftermath of atomic detonations in a controlled and ordered space, very much unlike their experiences visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki in September and October of 1945.
This talk considers their research during Operation Crossroads. A key question is why a group of fisheries biologists and doctors should be in charge of collecting radiological data in the first place. How did biologists muscle their way into the domain of physicists? What work did their data do? How did they understand the behavior of fission products moving through nature? These questions point to the newness of atomic research in the 1940s. The bomb, created by physicists, produced questions that straddled disciplinary boundaries. This talk unfolds how biologists exploited radiation’s ambiguities to claim a place in the US’s early atomic knowledge economy.
Stafford Warren, the doctor in charge of the Medical Section, and Lauren Donaldson, the fisheries biologist who directed the Section’s wartime x-ray research lab at the University of Washington, led the effort. They longed to understand radiation’s movement through land and sea. Crossroads seemed to present a perfect opportunity to track radiation in the field. Such a moment had eluded them so far. Over the summer of 1946, they had access to the actual aftermath of atomic detonations in a controlled and ordered space, very much unlike their experiences visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki in September and October of 1945.
This talk considers their research during Operation Crossroads. A key question is why a group of fisheries biologists and doctors should be in charge of collecting radiological data in the first place. How did biologists muscle their way into the domain of physicists? What work did their data do? How did they understand the behavior of fission products moving through nature? These questions point to the newness of atomic research in the 1940s. The bomb, created by physicists, produced questions that straddled disciplinary boundaries. This talk unfolds how biologists exploited radiation’s ambiguities to claim a place in the US’s early atomic knowledge economy.
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Presenters
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Joshua McGuffie
- Moorpark College