Their Day tn the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project

Labor and Social Change

by Ruth H. Howes, Caroline C. Herzenberg

The public perception of the making of the atomic bomb is yet an image of the dramatic efforts of a few brilliant male scientists. However, the Manhattan Project was not just the work of a few and it was not just in Los Alamos. It was, in fact, a sprawling research and industrial enterprise that spanned the country from Hanford in Washington State to Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and the Met labs in Illinois.

The Manhattan Project also included women in every capacity. During World War II the manpower shortages opened the laboratory doors to women and they embraced the opportunity to demonstrate that they, too, could do "creative science." Although women participated in all aspects of the Manhattan Project, their contributions are either omitted or only mentioned briefly in most histories of the project. It is this hidden story that is presented in Their Day in the Sun through interviews, written records, and photographs of the women who were physicists, chemists, mathematicians, biologists, and technicians in the labs.

Authors Ruth H. Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg have uncovered accounts of the scientific problems the women helped solve as well as the opportunities and discrimination they faced. Their Day in the Sun describes their abrupt recruitment for the war effort and includes anecdotes about everyday life in these clandestine improvised communities. A chapter about what happened to the women after the war and about their attitudes now, so many years later, toward the work they did on the bomb is included.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science

264 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 1999

Reviews

[Judith Tavano · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard about this book from the Lost Women of Science podcast. The authors focused on women’s role in the Manhattan Project on all levels from nuclear physics, chemistry, biology, health and mathematicians. This was the first book I’ve come across that provided the fullest accounting of women in these various roles. They also mentioned women who were non technical employees; i.e. teachers, child care, administration. The authors created a list of the women that they were able to find records of their work and interviewed those that were still alive who also provided more names.

When the authors started their research on these women, the reaction from friends was that it wouldn’t take too long to do because there weren’t any women working on the Manhattan Project. It turned out that it was a challenging to book to write because there were so many women but many records of their work couldn’t be found. There were various reasons why they were hard to find i.e.: women married and changed their names; they were part of a team and the team leader (usually male) was the one who got credit for the teams’ work; women didn’t keep their records of their work because they assumed no one would be interested in their work, etc. Never the less, the authors provided proof that women were working at all levels of the “Project” and making significant contributions.

Since we rarely hear of women working on such a technical project, it was good to know who some of them were and what contributions they made. How many women did you see in the Oppenheimer movie? Not many, only in passing and usually as a secretary, wife, mother or girlfriend. It is true they were a minority of the scientists and technicians working at Los Alamos and other sites across the country, still it was good to know they were there!!

It is always good for us gals to know our history in the United States and to understand what it took to get where we are today in those fields. Young women can’t be what they don’t see. Making these women from the past visible, knowing their history and the significance of their contributions, makes it easier for today’s young women to see themselves working in these technical fields.

[Marcia Haskell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book so interesting because I knew several people who worked on the Manhatten Project and heard their inpu on t\what the wmen who worked there had to live through.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly a gift to history, I so wish the book had felt the warm embrace of a light touch of editing by a non scientist. Written by 2 women scientists, it opens the door to the world of all women working in the Manhattan Project. One hopes this book represents a beginning in the identification, exploration and revealing of the world these women lived in, the arc of their lives, and the big footprints left from their collective walk into careers, however temporary. From clerks and cooks and drivers to nurses, librarians, nuclear physicists, chemists, mathematicians, biologists, and medical professionals, and managers and administrators, these women did things women had never done before. And then they also helped build the bomb that changed world history.

Warning to the reader: the writing style is dry, as dry as the Pajarito Plateau in a drought. I thirsted for some emotion from anyone - a woman being described in the book, a humorous event, or an author's reaction. The only emotion I found was the in the telling of the first death due to radiation exposure at Los Alamos. The book reads like an academic article in a scientific journal, understandable but one longs for a human connection beyond a recitation of dry information.

I very much hope, as the authors did, that further details about more of the lives of these women become known and recorded. The work clearly shows how women have been historically left to fade forgotten into the dust of time after making important discoveries and doing important work to advance science.

[(Tracy) LYNNE Leininger]

Very good book!!! Good history of women in Physics. Explains the science so you can understand it. I recommend!

[Jana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for my History of Women in Science class.