COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

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Much of the earliest research on fission and isotope separation was done in Manhattan at Columbia University, one of America's leading research universities and also one of its oldest. In 1754, King George II granted a charter for King's College, the first such institution of higher education in New York. The school closed with American independence in 1776 and was eventually reopened in 1784 as Columbia College. The college grew rapidly during the second half of the 19th century, changing its name to Columbia University in 1896, when it moved from downtown Manhattan to Morningside Heights. By the late 1930s, Columbia was one of the leading research universities in the country, home to some of America's major scientists and a group of physicists who would become central figures in the Manhattan Project research effort. At Columbia's Michael Pupin Laboratory were John R. Dunning, working with the cyclotron and other equipment he had acquired for neutron-reaction studies, Herbert L. Anderson, a gifted graduate student, Walter H. Zinn, who was at City College but did his research in the Columbia laboratories, and two of the leading European physicists fleeing fascism, Enrico Fermi, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938, and Leo Szilard. This team was under a sympathetic administrator, George B. Pegram, who would become vice-chairman of the uranium committee. Also at Columbia was the Nobel Prize-winning physical chemist Harold C. Urey, who had a long-standing interest in isotope separation.

In early 1939, Dunning and Fermi, in their own research, confirmed the discovery of fission and sought to extend the results. Their experiments, along with others, indicated that neutrons were released on fission of the uranium atom. The question remained as to which isotope of uranium fissioned with slow neutrons, neutrons that traveled at the energies known most likely to produce fission. Dunning thought uranium-235 was responsible. Collaborating with Alfred Nier of the University of Minnesota, Dunning in March 1940 proved conclusively that uranium-235, present in only 1 in 140 parts of natural uranium, was the isotope that fissioned with slow neutrons. Fermi, meanwhile, sought to demonstrate a chain reaction in natural uranium because of the extreme difficulty and expense of separating the isotopes. Fermi, working with Szilard, Anderson, and Zinn, aimed at a uranium and graphite pile, with the graphite used to slow down, or moderate, the neutrons. Lacking sufficient uranium and graphite, Fermi used a series of subcritical experiments to understand the processes involved and the appropriate arrangements for a pile. In fall 1941, Fermi and his team built an experimental pile preparatory to constructing a full-scale chain-reacting pile. Too large for the Pupin laboratory, the experimental pile was built in a large room in nearby Schermerhorn Hall. Fermi hoped to build the full-scale pile somewhere in the New York City area, but in January 1942 Arthur Compton decided to consolidate all pile work at the new Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. Fermi built one last experimental pile at Columbia in early 1942 before moving with his team to the Met Lab and constructing CP-1, which achieved the first self-sustaining chain reaction on December 2, 1942.

Columbia scientists also were on the forefront in researching uranium separation methods. Early on, only the high-speed centrifuge, of the various possible methods, seemed to offer much hope. Research centered at the University of Virginia and at Columbia. Urey headed an effort to develop a centrifuge suitable for industrial operations, but he quickly decided that specifications could not be made without additional research. He turned to Karl P. Cohen, a Columbia mathematician, to work on theoretical calculations. By early 1941, Cohen had established a body of theory that made it possible to ask the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company to design an experimental unit. A year later, Westinghouse began constructing centrifuges to be installed in a pilot plant to be operated by the Standard Oil Development Company and located at the Standard Oil Bayway Refinery at Linden, New Jersey. Two centrifuge models were installed and operated at the pilot plant before the project was terminated in January 1944.

Columbia, in addition, became the center for research on gaseous diffusion. First suggested as a possible method of isotope separation by the Harvard chemist George B. Kistiakowsky in May 1940, gaseous diffusion soon caught the attention of Urey, Dunning, and others at Columbia. A group under Dunning investigated a number of potential barrier materials, including naturally porous substances, various metal alloys, and metal powders, which might be used with uranium hexafluoride gas. They tested samples no larger than a coin in laboratory equipment that separated carbon dioxide from hydrogen. Similar samples they subjected to a stream of hexafluoride gas to check corrosion resistance and flow. By the end of 1941, the Dunning team had tried to achieve some separation of the uranium isotopes, but they did not have a pump even of laboratory size that could operate with the corrosive gas. In early 1942, the M.W. Kellogg Company was brought in to provide industrial experience and assist on pump development. The augmented Columbia research group built Pilot Plant No. 1, a small twelve-stage apparatus, in the university's Pupin Hall. Operation of this unit in fall 1942 furnished valuable data on major elements of a diffusion plant.

Beginning in late 1942, the Manhattan Engineer District began gradually extending its control over administration of the diffusion research program, culminating with Columbia's acceptance of a War Department contract on May 1, 1943. Shortly thereafter, university and MED representatives reorganized the program, designating it as the SAM (for Special Alloyed Materials) Laboratories and appointing Urey as director. The rapidly expanding research activities were moved from campus laboratories to more spacious facilities in the university's Nash Building, a few blocks north of the campus. By 1944, almost 1,000 scientist and worker were employed by the SAM Laboratories. Management of SAM was transferred to the Carbide and Carbon Chemicals Corporation in February 1945.

As the war progressed, Columbia made contributions in other areas. The Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory, founded in early 1945 and temporarily located in Pupin Hall, aided in the final temperature-pressure calculations necessary for the first atomic weapons. Additional research projects in health physics and component design remained at Columbia even after the Manhattan Project, including tests on the effects of fast-neutron radiation on mice.

Sources and notes for this page

The text for this page is original to the Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources. Major sources consulted include the following. Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., The New World, 1939-1946: Volume I, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (Washington: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1972); Manhattan District History, Book I - General, Volume 4 - Auxiliary Activities, - Chapter 14 - Investigation of Miscellaneous Processes of Separation of Uranium Isotopes, and Book II - Gaseous Diffusion (K-25) Project. For a history of Columbia University, see Robert A. McCaughey, Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1754-2004 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). The photograph of Columbia University ca. 1903 is courtesy the Library of Congress; it originated from the Detroit Publishing Company and was a 1949 gift to the Library of Congress from the State Historical Society of Colorado. The copy of Fermi's INS certificate is courtesy the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). A digital copy is available on NARA's Archival Research Catalog. It is titled Certificate of Arrival, Number 2 648961, for Enrico Fermi, 06/07/1939, and is designated by ARC identifier 281851.