Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project (Labor and Social Change) [Paperback]

Ruth H. Howes (Author), Caroline C. Herzenberg (Author)

Book Description

Series: Labor and Social Change | Publication Date: April 2003

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. Author note: Ruth H. Howes is George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University. She is Vice President of the American Association of Physics Teachers and President Elect of the Indiana Academy of Science. She is also co-editor of "The Energy Sourcebook" and "Women and the Use of Military Force". Caroline L. Herzenberg, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, is past president of the Association for Women in Science. She is author of "Women Scientists from Antiquity to the Present".

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

As detailed in this book, many women worked on the Manhattan Project, from physicists and mathematicians at Los Alamos to public health specialists at Oak Ridge and Hanford to chemists at the Metallurgical Lab of the University of Chicago. Working from archival files at the various labs and universities and then pursuing leads developed through personal and telephone-based interviews, the authors, both physicists, have identified several hundred women affiliated in some way with the project. Valuable because so little has been written on this subject, this book is nevertheless frustrating because of its anecdotal nature. In many cases, the text jumps from person to person, simply presenting a sentence or two about each one as though that were all the files and investigation could produce. Still, the book is quite interesting in what it reveals, both particularly about the chauvinism of the project's male management and the na?vet? of professional and support staff regarding the harmful effects of nuclear materials. Recommended for academic history of science collections.AHilary Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Of the many women who contributed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I remember with pleasure most of the physicists who I knew quite well. It is nice to read about Los Alamos as a success story." --Dr. Edward Teller, Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution "I am thrilled to learn of so many of the remarkable women who contributed to innumerable aspects of [this] great enterprise. This book enables us to meet each other, to swap stories. The authors have done a superb job of detective work, tracking down an impressive number of them, more than 300. It is important to record and credit women's contributions to the social and technological history of the making of the bomb." --Ellen C. Weaver, Ph.D., Past President, Association for Women in Science "Quite interesting in what it reveals, both particularly about the chauvinism of the project's male management and the naivete of professional and support staff regarding the harmful effects of nuclear materials. Recommended for academic history of science collections." --Library Journal "Authors Howes and Herzenberg have done a remarkable job in synthesizing archived information on the women of the Manhattan Project and in bringing these women to life on the pages of their book." --AWIS Magazine "Painstakingly researched...this [book] provides a valuable beginning to the study of a previously neglected topic and contributes to our knowledge of the history of women in science." --Science Books and Films

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592131921
• ISBN-13: 978-1592131921
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #939,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Woman and the Atomic Bomb, January 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project (Labor and Social Change) (Hardcover)

This work chronicles the role that women played in the Manhatten project during World War II in the fields of mathematics, chemistry, physics, health biology, etc. It also provides an interesting account of the role of women in the physics discoveries during the early twentieth century which made the development of nuclear weapons possible.

This book is especially valuable since this information has not been treated in any kind of systematic way in any previous historical accounts of the Manhatten project.

5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good idea, badly flawed execution, December 20, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project (Labor and Social Change) (Hardcover)

Although attempts to profile female contributions to great undertakings are appreciated, Their day in the sun, is fundamentally flawed by the authors bias toward academic, primarily physicist, researchers and by the authors failure to understand the mechanisms and downstream effects of Manhattan Project technologies. This has lead to a poorly organized document that spends pages on the contributions of a truck driver, secretary, or clerk whose husband was a Los Alamos or Chicago Met Lab physicist while ignoring the contributions of the tens of thousands of women who worked at other facilities, often in professional scientific or engineering capabilities. This is partially due to the uniqueness and historic significance of the atom bomb. However, other successes growing out of the Manhattan Project touch our lives every day: the medical isotopes that delineate a blocked heart artery, the separations that make good vaccines and new plastics possible, and the nuclear power reactors that remain our cleanest electric energy generators.

The authors indicate that the limitations on their research imposed by the availability of published documents or potential interviewees were responsible for their omissions. However, in preparing reviews of the technology developed at a variety of Manhattan Project sites, my working group found reasonable access to both people and written records. Also, epidemiological researchers who have evaluated clinical effects, mortality, and morbidity of Manhattan project staff have been able to contact significant portions of former workers. Recent epidemiological studies of female illnesses (e. g., breast cancer) make the omission of the bulk of the Manhattan Projects female staff for reasons other than bias or intellectual laxness difficult to understand.