Oral history interview with Wallace B. Reynolds, 1975 December 12.

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Oral history interview with Wallace B. Reynolds, 1975 December 12.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/77679046

Background and early education, early technical interests; studies electrical engineering at University of California at Berkeley beginning 1922, extracurricular employment in construction, job with Architectures and Engineers as liaison for construction of Life Sciences and Engineering buildings. Beginning of lifelong association with Ernest Lawrence; budgeting and planning work on 27-inch, 37-inch, and 60-inch cyclotrons with William Brobeck, Donald Cooksey, Edwin McMillan; University of California Radiation Lab's relationship to the physics department, sources and distribution of funds. Effects of war on supply of materials and motivation in the Lab; the Oak Ridge National Laboratory project, organization and administration, Alpha and Beta programs; contacts with Stone & Webster, Tennessee Eastman, Robert Thornton, General Leslie Groves; relationship with government agencies and with the University of California's administration, Bob Underhill, Dana P. Mitchell. Involvement in setting up Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, events surrounding development of the atomic bomb; military and Bell Labs, Sandia Laboratory involvement, government service coordinating nuclear laboratories policy; the Trinity test and wind down of the Oak Ridge project. Return to Berkeley, post war planning with Lawrence for 184-inch cyclotron. Atmosphere prior to establishment of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the transition to AEC management postwar projects, Luis Alvarez' and Lawrence's plan for materials production leading to the Materials Testing Accelerator and Livermore Laboratory; own role, Herbert York, the growth of military and AEC bureaucracies; administrative difficulties in the Radiation Laboratory, the Lab after Lawrence's death.

Transcript, 85 pp.

American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library

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SNAC Resource ID: 8200725

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