page_title: Henry DeWolf Smyth
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Henry DeWolf Smyth / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: Richard Tolman and Henry D. Smyth
context_page_description: Henry DeWolf "Harry" Smyth was an American physicist, diplomat, and bureaucrat. He played a number of key roles in the early development of nuclear energy, as a participant in the Manhattan Project, a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
  Educated at Princeton University and the University of Cambridge, he was a faculty member in Princeton's Department of Physics from 1924 to 1966. He chaired the department from 1935 to 1949. His early research was on the ionization of gases, but his interests shifted toward nuclear physics beginning in the mid-1930s.
  During World War II he was a member of the National Defense Research Committee's Uranium Committee and a consultant on the Manhattan Project. He wrote the Manhattan Project's first public official history, which came to be known as the Smyth Report.
  On the AEC from 1949 to 1954, Smyth initially argued unsuccessfully against a crash course to develop the hydrogen bomb and in favor of international control of nuclear weapons, before switching to support of the weapon.
context_section_description: During World War II, Smyth was involved in helping the United States build the atomic bomb. From 1941–43 he was a member of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC)'s Uranium Committee charged with producing fissile material for the bomb. Smyth proposed the electromagnetic methods that were used to enrich the first large U-235 samples for the project. He also oversaw a nuclear fission-related project for the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). During 1943–45 he was a consultant to the Manhattan Project, which built and tested the weapon, and associate director of the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory, which contributed to the Manhattan Project. At the Metallurgical Laboratory he headed research on heavy water. He remained chairman of Princeton's physics department throughout the war, and the attendant obligations forced him to participate less actively in the project's later stages.
  In August 1944 General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, appointed Smyth to the Postwar Policy Committee, which was charged with proposing government policy for research and development of atomic energy after the war was over. The committee recommended that a national commission modeled on the OSRD fund and oversee continued production and fundamental research in government laboratories, universities, and the private sector.
caption: Smyth (right) with Richard Tolman, who chaired the Postwar Policy Committee.[27]
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.8.14", "Image DateTime": "2014:12:03 22:46:56", "Image ExifOffset": "146", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2828", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2257"}