Katharine “Kay” Way was a nuclear physicist who labored at a number of Manhattan Project websites. She was an professional in radioactive decay. But after atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan, she grew to become more and more involved in regards to the ethics of nuclear weapons. Way signed the Szilard Petition and labored to unfold consciousness of the ethical duty surrounding atomic weaponry. Her efforts included co-editing the influential One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb, and he or she remained an outspoken advocate for equity and justice.
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Katie Hafner: This is Lost Women of the Manhattan Project, a particular sequence of Lost Women of Science. I’m Katie Hafner. This week we’re going to let you know about Katharine Way, a nuclear physicist who did necessary work on radioactive decay. We assume the world must learn about her. And whereas we’re at it this week, we’re additionally going to let you know a little bit extra in regards to the Szilard Petition from 1945.
I’m sitting right here with producer Erica Huang. Well, we’re not – I’m really not sitting right here with you. I’m in my closet in my home. And you might be….
Erica Huang: I’m in a studio in Brooklyn.
Hafner: You know, let me simply begin by saying that once we had been attempting to determine who, among the many many ladies who labored on the Manhattan Project, who we’d be specializing in, Amy Scharf, my co-executive producer stated we have now to concentrate on a minimum of one girl who signed the Szilard petition. To which I stated, ‘What’s that?’
Huang: Yeah.
Hafner: So we determined to concentrate on Kay Way.
Huang: Yes. And I’m very excited to speak about Kay Way. But earlier than we form of get into her story, I wished to play you this piece of tape.
Announcer: It is subsequently an crucial necessity that every one the nations of the world unite to avert disaster.
Huang: Okay, so it is a a clip from a brief movie that was made in 1946. It’s this like animated black and white film. It’s acquired this very dramatic voiceover and the film is named One World or None.
Announcer: Representatives of the peoples of the world should collectively make legal guidelines, which can abolish battle, legal guidelines, which can maintain the person in all lands accountable for crime in opposition to World Peace.
Huang: One World or None is sort of attention-grabbing as a result of it was one of many first atomic scare movies ever made, which I suppose is sort of a style of movies that had been made to attempt to each like unfold consciousness about nuclear weaponry, but in addition form of like impress upon the general public the truth that it was like a really huge and scary deal.
Hafner: And I’m simply listening to it. Have you really seen it?
Huang: Yeah. So there’s some visuals of atoms, and massive world maps with circles round main cities, like if there have been an atomic bomb dropped right here, that is how a lot destruction there can be. And additionally these pictures of mass grave websites to indicate simply the staggering variety of folks that may be killed.
The movie was impressed by a guide of the identical identify, One World or None, which was composed of essays and contributions from all the greatest stars in physics on the time. Albert Einstein wrote one thing for it. Hans Bethe, Neils Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard all contributed to this guide and it was the primary main publication that stated we’re within the atomic age. It’s necessary for us to know what the magnitude of this scientific breakthrough is gonna imply for the world.
Hafner: So very, very critical. This was not simply, I assumed it was form of like simply, um, a bunch of beginner filmmakers making a scare film. But this was actually the scientists who, a few of whom helped construct the bomb, who afterwards, I suppose actually regretted it.
Huang: Yeah. And the lady who was behind it, who form of turned that remorse and the shock over what had occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki into this guide was a girl named Katharine Way.
Hafner: But glided by Kay. Is that proper?
Huang: Yes. Born Katharine, glided by Kay Way to her mates.
Hafner: Have you seen a photograph of her?
Huang: Yes. She’s acquired these wonderful tortoise shell glasses on, and this type of brief, curly hair, and he or she’s simply smiling on the digital camera. She seems to be filled with vitality. She’s like, right here to do physics. Um, I do not know. I simply, I noticed this image and I used to be like, she seems to be so cool. Like, I need, I wanna be her pal.
Hafner: Aw, inform me about her.
Huang: So, Kay Way was born in 1903 in Pennsylvania and he or she went to boarding college in New Jersey and Connecticut. And whereas she was at boarding college in Connecticut, there’s this attention-grabbing anecdote about her. She was assigned a time period paper on what she had discovered at college. And she and her pal, as an alternative of writing what they’d discovered, they as an alternative wrote a scathing critique of the college’s curriculum.
Hafner: You imply the very college she was attending?
Huang: Yes, the college she was attending. They determined they weren’t gonna write about what they discovered. They had been gonna write in regards to the points with the curriculum, and he or she anticipated the trainer to fail them, however turned it in anyway, and as an alternative she was praised for her unbiased thought.
Hafner: So did that set her up effectively for school? Where did she go?
Huang: So Kay began at Vassar after which transferred to Barnard and ultimately acquired her undergraduate diploma in physics in 1932, which was awarded by Columbia University. She then went on to obtain her PhD in nuclear physics on the University of North Carolina in 1938.
Hafner: Wow. So she actually wasn’t discouraged. I imply, I haven’t got the precise numbers. Let’s simply say, it was extremely uncommon. For a girl again then to get a PhD in nuclear physics.
Huang: Yeah. It’s fairly astonishing. And the opposite factor about her being in North Carolina is that within the Thirties, North Carolina was the most important textile producer within the nation, and it had simply been hit very arduous by the Great Depression.
So the textile staff that did handle to hold onto their jobs confronted low pay and harmful working circumstances, and so they had been forming unions, they had been happening strike for livable wages. And Kay heard about this and determined that she needed to help these strikes, so she and some different graduate college students collected clothes and meals for the employees that had been on strike.
Hafner: You know, that’s simply wonderful. I imply, I, I do know that I’m stereotyping physicists right here, however do not they have a tendency to have their head down within the bits, simply form of doing their work?
Huang: Absolutely. I believe she was simply somebody that paid consideration. When World War II broke out, she was engaged on the development of a neutron supply to provide Neptunium-239 on the University of Tennessee.
Hafner: Do we all know what nep… excuse my ignorance right here, it sounds prefer it – Neptunium?
Huang: Ok, we determined to really ask an professional about this.
Alex Wellerstein: So Neptunium-239 is a man-made isotope you can create when Uranium-238 absorbs a neutron.
Huang: This is Alex Wellerstein, a professor on the Stevens Institute of Technology who research the historical past of nuclear weapons.
Wellerstein: Now, the important thing factor right here is that Neptunium-239 is just not very secure. So inside a pair days, most of your Neptunium-239 is gonna have changed into one thing else, which is Plutonium-239 and Plutonium-239 is what you employ in nuclear weapons. So I do not know precisely what Kay Way was, uh, researching about Neptunium-239, however that is going to be an important step in producing plutonium.
Huang: She was additionally educating as an assistant professor in physics. And in 1942, she heard rumors that there was a nuclear mission taking place in Chicago. And she stated, okay, I do know who to name about this: John Wheeler, who had been her professor. She’d been his PhD scholar at UNC. So she referred to as him up and he or she requested if there was work for her on this nuclear mission.
Hafner: So was he, was Wheeler on the mission?
Huang: Yes. Wheeler at that time was on the mission and he introduced her onto the mission. So she transferred. She went to Chicago at first and the very first thing that she did after she acquired to Chicago was she began working with this different physicist who was working there named Eugene Wigner, and collectively they developed the Way-Wigner components for fission product decay.
Hafner: I assume you are gonna inform me what that’s, however simply let me say I’m so blissful to listen to her identify first on this Way-Wigner components, as a result of which means not solely did she do all the, effectively, perhaps I’m presuming a lot of the work, however acquired credit score for it.
Huang: Yeah. Okay. I really like that too
We requested Alex to elucidate the significance of the Way-Wigner components.
Wellerstein: The tough factor in understanding fission merchandise is that there are numerous ’em. So if you’re splitting a uranium or plutonium atom, relying on what number of protons and neutrons find yourself in every half, you get a very totally different, usually completely uncommon isotope. In a really perfect world, in case you wished to say what’s taking place to the stuff after that will get cut up after an atomic bomb goes off, or what’s gathering in a reactor, you’ll take a look at every single one of many potential isotopes that comes out. Trying to do this for all of this stuff. It, it is, it is not one thing that they may do within the Forties and fifties.
Huang: So Way and Wigner crunched a bunch of numbers and got here up with a solution to generalize for all fission merchandise.
Wellerstein: So as an alternative of claiming Xenon-135 has a half-life of X, you are primarily saying, fission merchandise have a half-life, and this is how we discuss it. This is a generalization. You’re form of averaging every part, but it surely’s a lot sooner to have one little half-life than to attempt to handle a whole lot of half lives over big quantities of time.
Huang: And though we have now the computing energy in the present day to get extra particular in our calculations, the Way-Wigner components’s ease of use and skill to be simply adjusted to suit totally different contexts signifies that it nonetheless will get numerous trendy use. For instance, to calculate decay warmth in nuclear reactors.
Wellerstein: You form of assume, oh, you flip a reactor off, it is off. No, it is really nonetheless very popular. This has been the problem at Fukushima, uh, this was a problem at Three Mile Island is the decay warmth is, poses issues, if you do not have, , contemporary water coming in and issues like that. I imply, I’ve, I’ve used it. I, I’ve an internet site that simulates nuclear weapon detonations, and it calculates fallout and it makes use of the Way-Wigner, as a result of that is simply the best way you do it.
Hafner: So this was actually, actually necessary work that she did. So she labored in Chicago, was Kay in that Fermi group?
Huang: She wasn’t in Enrico Fermi’s group, however she labored with numerous Fermi’s knowledge. So she actually was the particular person engaged on fission decay, and that was each with Fermi’s knowledge, after which she additionally ended up going to numerous totally different websites the place they had been constructing reactors and utilizing this knowledge in these formulation.
Hafner: So she, if you say she went to numerous totally different websites, totally different Manhattan Project websites?
Huang: Yes. She went to Hanford, she went to Los Alamos and he or she ultimately went to Oak Ridge, which was distinctive as a result of the mission was so segmented. Not lots of people went to multiple website, not to mention, , 4.
Hafner: And they wanted her specifically?
Huang: Because of her work on fission product decay. So after they had been producing reactors throughout the nation, they had been utilizing her designs and so they wished her to come back and take a look at what they had been doing ‘trigger she was the professional.
Hafner: You know, we’re about to start out speaking in regards to the Szilard petition, which I’ll remind everyone seems to be a part of the rationale that we wished to, to have a look at Kay Way and I simply found one thing fairly wonderful that I wanna let you know about, which is I went on-line, I discovered the petition itself. And this factor was signed by all of the, all of the scientists who signed it on July seventeenth, 1945. That was the day after the Trinity check: So they’d this factor able to go. So are you able to inform us what it was and who Szilard was?
Huang: Leo Szilard was a physicist who conceived of the nuclear chain response, and over the course of engaged on the Manhattan Project, he grew to become more and more involved about dropping this weapon of mass destruction on Japan.
So he wrote this petition and handed it round and acquired numerous signatures on it, which mainly implored Truman to think about the ethical implications of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.
Hafner: Yes, precisely. It says, we, the undersigned respectfully petition, first that you just train your energy as commander in chief – that may be Truman – to rule that the United States shall not resort to using atomic bombs on this battle except the phrases, which shall be imposed upon Japan – have been made public intimately and Japan, realizing these phrases has refused to give up.
Huang: Apparently Truman by no means noticed this petition. There had been 70 scientists in all that signed the petition. We have tape really of Lilli Hornig who’s the topic of one among our earlier episodes.
Hafner: Oh, Lilli. Oh, you have got tape? Oh, Lilli. Okay. Wait, we must always hear this.
Lilli Hornig: Of course, it made no distinction, however we thought in our innocence that if we petitioned arduous sufficient, uh, they could do an illustration check and invite the Japanese to witness it.
Hafner: Kay, after all, signed the petition.
Huang: Of course. She was fairly shocked, I believe when she realized the complete scale of what the bomb would do. And after the bomb was dropped, she was actually bowled over by the dimensions of the destruction.
Hafner: What did she do after the battle?
Huang: Kay had a imaginative and prescient for the world of nuclear research put up Manhattan mission.
Roger Cloutier: After the battle was over, Katharine Way got here again to the University of Tennessee.
Huang: This is Roger Cloutier, who served because the director of Oak Ridge Associated Universities skilled coaching applications, a nonprofit group working in science, well being, and schooling.
Cloutier: And anyone held a reception for Katharine Way, and whereas they had been on the reception, she was speaking in regards to the institutes that had been being established at Princeton and different locations the place Oppenheimer ended up at. And she stated they ought to start out one in Oak Ridge.
Hafner: Oh, that is wonderful. So they began a program at Oak Ridge, quite a bit just like the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. They really did that. Oh, that is, I did not, I had no thought.
Huang: Yeah. To practice up, practice up scientists and it was, it was Kay’s thought to do this.
Hafner: Mm-hmm. And then got here One World or None. Tell me how, how was that acquired?
Huang: So Kay additionally got here up with the thought for this guide, together with one among her colleagues. She made a listing of urged contributors. She communicated this concept to her eventual co-editor and to a publishing firm. And to be able to persuade them that this mission was viable, she telephoned all of those people who she’d written on the checklist.
So referred to as up I presume Albert Einstein, and stated, hello, I’m, I’m placing collectively this guide of essays. I need you to contribute to it. And she persuaded sufficient folks on this checklist to contribute to this guide that the publishing firm greenlit the mission.
Hafner: Einstein, Bethe, Neils Bohr.
Huang: Yes.
Hafner: So the rock stars, the physics rock stars.
Huang: Here’s Cloutier once more speaking about that.
Cloutier: For her to get round and be capable of go and get all these folks, together with Albert Einstein and so forth, uh, to be able to write little articles about what’s gonna occur, it says she deserves some credit score.
Hafner: How did it do as a guide?
Huang: It was a New York Times bestseller.
Hafner: Really!
Huang: It offered 100 thousand copies.
Hafner: Oh, I hope she acquired an enormous royalty verify.
Huang: I hope so too.
She went on to do numerous different issues. So she joined the Federation of Atomic Scientists.
Hafner: Aha. You know, that may be a very acquainted group to me as a result of my grandfather was a part of it, and this was the group who grew to become actually deeply involved about using nuclear weapons for mass destruction. And as I perceive it, the um, Federation of Atomic Scientists then grew to become the Federation of American Scientists, which is what it’s in the present day, which continues to work to reduce the dangers of worldwide risk, from nuclear weapons and chemical weapons and all these very dangerous issues.
Huang: Kay’s work after the battle, additionally prolonged approach past physics. Just to present you a little bit little bit of a listing, she marched in civil rights demonstrations within the sixties. She established the Nuclear Data Sheets journal, which influenced a complete era of analysis specialists. She spoke out in opposition to investigations in opposition to her fellow scientists throughout the wave of McCarthyism that unfold throughout the US, and he or she even wrote to the Atomic Energy Commission to complain in regards to the proceedings.
Hafner: You imply the anti-communist proceedings?
Huang: Yes, the anti-communist proceedings and the best way that her fellow scientists had been caught up in these proceedings primarily based on rumors and rumour and issues like that.
Hafner: Did she ever get married?
Huang: No. Kay by no means acquired married.
Hafner: Mhm. We can hope she wasn’t lonely and remoted when she, as she grew previous.
Huang: She positively wasn’t lonely in her older years, she really was an advocate at her retirement group. So she, she, uh,
Hafner: I really like that.
Huang: I do know.
Hafner: I’m positive they liked it too. I believe she in all probability unionized the residents.
Huang: She, I imply, she fashioned a committee referred to as Durham Seniors for Better Health within the City of Medicine and championed seniors’ well being and monetary rights.
So she was, she was surrounded by good folks and championing for them.
Hafner: And this was in Durham, North Carolina.
Huang: Yes, in Durham, in her retirement years.
Hafner: What yr did she die?
Huang: She died in 1995.
I wished to share this half from her obituary, which ran in physics in the present day.
Kay Way felt and expressed herself passionately, not solely in regards to the evaluation of nuclear knowledge, but in addition about many problems with human equity and social justice. In such issues, she was an outspoken advocate relatively than merely a sympathetic bystander.
Hafner: This has been Lost Women of the Manhattan Project, a particular sequence from Lost Women of Science. This episode was produced by Huang with assist from Deborah Unger. Lizzy Younan composes our music. Paula Mangin creates our artwork and Danya AbdelHameid is our fact-checker. I’m Hafner and I’m your host. Thanks to Amy Scharf, Jeff DelViscio, Eowyn Burtner, Lauren Croop, Jeannie Stivers and Carla Sephton.
Lost Women of Science is funded partly by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Schmidt Futures. We’re distributed by PRX and produced in partnership with Scientific American.
You can discover much more about us – together with the all-important donate button – at lostwomenofscience.org.
In this particular sequence, we will’t let you know all of the tales of the a whole lot of ladies who labored on the Manhattan Project, however we will let you know a lot of their names, which we’ve been studying aloud for you on and off by way of this sequence. Here are a couple of extra….
Speaker: Pearl Leach Gordon
Speaker: Jane Heydorn
Speaker: Elsie Mae Freeman
Speaker: Bernice Brode
Speaker: Miriam Finkel
Speaker: Susan Herrick
Speaker: Beatrice Foreman
Speaker: Edna Okay. Marks
Speaker: Kay Tracy
Speaker: Naomi Livesay
Speaker: Ardis Monk
Speaker: Eleanor Ewing
Speaker: Hazel Genzel
Further studying:
Their Day within the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project, Ruth H. Howes & Caroline L. Herzenberg. Temple University Press, 1999. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Their-Day-Sun-Manhattan-Project/dp/1592131921
One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb, edited by Dexter Masters and Katharine Way. The New Press, 2007 (first printed 1946). https://thenewpress.com/books/one-world-or-none
The Rate of Decay of Fission Products, Okay. Way & E. P. Wigner, Physical Review Journals Archive, Phys. Rev. 73, 1948. https://journals.aps.org/pr/summary/10.1103/PhysRev.73.1318
