Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Engineering

Research and education in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began in the Departments of Physics and Chemical Engineering as early as 1946. To foster education and research in the field, the Institute actively recruited personnel who had been involved in atomic energy projects during World War II. Nuclear science was not yet the domain of any single group of academics; mathematicians, scientists, and engineers worked together, often on specific applications, as they had during the war years. Many of the subjects offered and much of the research undertaken at the Institute was classified. Civilians and military personnel came to MIT primarily to acquire graduate training related to nuclear weapons and propulsion, but there was no organized program in this field for several years.

In 1946 the Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Engineering,later named the Laboratory for Nuclear Science (LNS), was established under the direction of professor of physics Jerrold R. Zacharias. The lab reported to the Department of Physics, but the personnel were drawn from many departments, including metallurgy and various engineering departments. Under the auspices of the lab, faculty members from throughout the Institute taught classes and supervised graduate research. Subjects included a classified course in nuclear reactor design and an introductory course in which approximately 30 pioneers in the field of nuclear energy gave a series of unclassified lectures. Other early members of the lab include Clark C. Goodwin, a physicist who taught nuclear reactor design; Edwin R. Gilliland, a professor of chemical engineering; Robley D. Evans, a physicist who taught treatment of nuclear fusion; and Albert R. Kaufman, a metallurgist who directed classified research and taught about the metallurgy of nuclear materials.

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