Special Collections Research Center

Manhattan Project and Atomic Scientists

Manhattan Project and Metallurgical Laboratory Sources

Because of the distribution of Manhattan Project research teams and production facilities at numerous sites across the country during World War II, historical records of the atomic bomb program are widely dispersed.

Researchers interested in documentation of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, or the Manhattan Project as a whole, should consult the holdings of the National Archives-Great Lakes Region (Chicago Branch) as well as the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C., and its NARA Archival Research Catalog (ARC).

Additional related material is held by Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Chicago.


Selected Archives and Modern Manuscript Collections

The following collections are accessible through finding aids in the Special Collections Research Center.
Finding aids that have been converted to digital form can be searched in the online finding aids database.

For more detailed information on holdings, please contact:

Special Collections Research Center
University of Chicago Library
1100 E. 57th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60637

  • Samuel King Allison. Papers.
  • Archival Biographical Files.
  • University of Chicago Photographic Archive.
  • Archival Serials.
  • Association of Cambridge Scientists. Records.
  • Association of Los Alamos Scientists. Records.
  • Association of Oak Ridge Engineers and Scientists. Records.
  • Association of Pasadena Scientists. Records.
  • Association of Scientists for Atomic Education. Records.
  • Atomic Scientists. Miscellaneous Records.
  • Atomic Scientists of Chicago. Records.
  • Atomic Scientists Printed and Near-Print Material. Records.
  • Seymour Bernstein. Papers.
  • Niels Bohr. Collection. Cataloged as: oblQC16.B67A3 Rare
  • Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Records.
  • Charles D. Coryell. Papers.
  • Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. Records.
  • Federation of American Scientists. Records.
  • Enrico Fermi. Papers.
  • James Franck. Papers.
  • Paul S. Henshaw. Papers.
  • Thorfin R. Hogness. Papers.
  • Clyde Allen Hutchison, Jr. Papers.
  • Lawrence H. Lanzl. Papers
  • Robert S. Mulliken. Papers.
  • Robert L. Platzman. Papers.
  • Eugene I. Rabinowitch. Papers.
  • J. H. Rush. Papers.
  • Samuel Schwartz. Papers.
  • John A. Simpson. Papers.
  • Francis W. Test. Papers.
  • University of Chicago. Dept. of Physics. Records.
  • University of Chicago. Division of the Physical Sciences. Records.
  • University of Chicago. Institute for Nuclear Studies, Cyclotron. Records.
  • University of Chicago. Louis Slotin Memorial Fund. Records.
  • University of Chicago. Nuclear Pile and Plutonium 20th Anniversary. Records.
  • University of Chicago. Presidents' Papers.
  • Uranium Committee. Laboratory Records.
  • Washington Association of Scientists. Records.
  • Marvin Wilkening. Papers.

See also Physical Sciences, Astronomy, and Astrophysics Collections

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The Manhattan Project: An Introductory Bibliography

Boyer, Paul S. By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. New York: Pantheon, 1985.

Bush, Vannevar. Pieces of the Action. New York: William Morrow, 1970.

Compton, Arthur Holly. Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.

Conant, James Bryant. My Several Lives: Memoirs of a Social Inventor. New York: Harper and Row, 1970.

Fermi, Laura. Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954.

Fermi, Rachel, and Esther Samra. Picturing the Bomb: Photographs from the Secret World of the Manhattan Project. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1995.

Greenbaum, Leonard. A Special Interest: The Atomic Energy Commission, Argonne National Laboratory, and the Midwestern Universities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971.

Groves, Leslie R. Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962.

Hawkins, David, Edith C. Truslow, and Ralph Carlisle Smith. Manhattan District History: Project Y, the Los Alamos Project. Los Alamos, N.M.: Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, University of California, 1961.

Hoddeson, Lillian. Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Holl, Jack M. Argonne National Laboratory, 1946-96. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Jones, Vincent C. Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb. United States Army in World War II: Special Studies. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1985.

Lanouette, William. Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1992.

Libby, Leona Marshall. The Uranium People. New York: Crane, Russak & Company; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1979.

Mason, Katrina R. Children of Los Alamos: An Oral History of the Town Where the Atomic Age Began. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995.

Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986.

Sachs, Robert G., ed. The Nuclear Chain Reaction -- Forty Years Later: Proceedings of a University of Chicago Commemorative Symposium Commemorating the Fortieth Anniversary of the First Controlled, Self-Sustaining Nuclear Chain Reaction. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984.

Segre, Emilio. Enrico Fermi, Physicist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Smith, Alice Kimball. A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists' Movement in America, 1945-47. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

Stoff, Michael B, Jonathan F. Fanton, and R. Hal Willliams, eds. The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.

Truslow, Edith C., and Kasha V. Thayer. Manhattan District History: Nonscientific Aspects of Los Alamos Project Y, 1942 through 1946. Los Alamos, New Mexico: Los Alamos Historical Society, 1991.

Wittner, Lawrence S. The Struggle Against the Bomb; Vol. 1: One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement through 1953; Vol. 2: Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993-1997.

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