[1] His mother wanted him to go to college and a friend suggested that he study chemistry, noting that Paterson's dye companies that served the textile plants there would always need chemists.

[2] He became part of the Manhattan Project at Columbia University, where he worked on methods to achieve the separation of the uranium-235 from the more plentiful isotope uranium-238 needed to complete an atomic bomb using the enriched uranium.

[4] Research he did in collaboration with Harold Urey that studied the varying levels of isotopes of oxygen in marine fossils allowed for the determination of the water temperature that prevailed while the animals were alive.

[8] In an address in March 1983 at Washington State University at ceremonies where he was awarded the college's Distinguished Alumnus Award, Bigeleisen advocated on behalf of nuclear disarmament, saying that "we have to stop putting our efforts into building more and more bombs" and that the time had come to start dismantling the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in the nation's stockpile.

[9] While saying that he didn't regret his participation in the Manhattan Project,[10] he said that "having lived through that time, that any further use of nuclear weapons is out of the question.