We are sad to report the passing of our friend and Manhattan Project veteran Norman Brown on November 7, 2015 at the age of 92. Not long after completing his sophomore year at MIT, Brown was recruited into the Manhattan Project. He was selected for the Special Engineer Detachment, and was first stationed at Oak Ridge before being sent to Los Alamos.
At Los Alamos, Brown worked under chemist Art Wahl, who explained the entire project to Brown despite the fact that he had no security clearance. For the next two years, Brown worked with transuranic elements and helped purify the plutonium that went into the Fat Man implosion bomb. After the war, Brown received his PhD in physical chemistry from Brown University. He worked for several government agencies on food technology, renewable energy and international issues.
Brown spoke at our 70th anniversary events in Washington, DC in June 2015. He electrified the audience by bringing with him a lucite hemisphere that was forged in the original mold used for the plutonium pit, with trinitite embedded in it (below, with a smaller paperwhite with trinitite). Historian Dr. Alex Wellerstein wrote, “This is an incredible thing to have kept…I am sure its existence is the result of a violation of untold numbers of security rules. It looked how we all expected it to, but it still amazing to see something like this, knowing how secret it once was, and even now is supposed to be.”
Brown gave AHF two terrific interviews on his Manhattan Project experience. You can watch the interviews on our “Voices of the Manhattan Project” website here. He said, “I do think that the history of the Manhattan Project is something that should not be forgotten.” He did his best to be sure that his story, and the stories of other soldiers and scientists like him, would be remembered.
For more about Brown and his many accomplishments, read his obituary in the Washington Post.