John R. Dunning

John Ray Dunning (September 24, 1907 – August 25, 1975) was an American physicist who played key roles in the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs.

He graduated from Shelby High School in 1925, and entered Nebraska Wesleyan University where he became a member of Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, and received a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

In 1936, Dunning received a Traveling Fellowship, which he used to meet and discuss his neutron physics research with many eminent European nuclear physicists including Niels Bohr, James Chadwick, Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, and Ernest Rutherford.

[4] It was announced in 2007 that Columbia University has decided to junk a 70-year-old atom smasher, which is the nation's oldest artefact of the nuclear era.

[6] In December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to Naturwissenschaften reporting they had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons.

[9] Even before it was published, Meitner’s and Frisch’s interpretation of the work of Hahn and Strassmann crossed the Atlantic Ocean with Niels Bohr, who was to lecture at Princeton University.

Dunning headed the laboratory division responsible for all aspects of the gaseous diffusion program, including engineering problems, pilot plants and research activities.

His citation read: for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service to the War Department, in accomplishments involving great responsibility and scientific distinction in connection with the development of the greatest military weapon of all time, the atomic bomb.

A physicist of national distinction, Dr. Dunning's unselfish and unswerving devotion to duty have contributed significantly to the success of the Atomic Bomb project.

In the immediate post-war years he was scientific director for construction of the Nevis Laboratories, a collaborative effort of Columbia University, the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and the Office of Naval Research.

In one experiment, he drank irradiated salt water, and used a geiger counter to demonstrate to his audience how his fingers became radioactive as sodium-24, with its half life of 15 hours, circulated through his bloodstream.