Furman helped develop an ether extraction process to extract Uranium oxide, a precursor to the fissile material used in the first atom bombs as discussed in the Smyth report. He served as a special consultant to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and was an advisor to the post-War Office of Scientific Research and Development. An August 8, 1945, special to the Princeton Bulletin revealed that multiple Princeton faculty, among them Albert Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, Henry DeWolf Smyth, Hugh Stott Taylor, and Furman, had all "disappeared to Shangri-La" to work secretly on the bomb during wartime.