The founder and first conductor was Waldo Cohn, a Manhattan Project biochemist and an accomplished cellist who started hosting chamber music sessions in his home upon arriving in Oak Ridge in 1943.
Many of the early members of the orchestra left Oak Ridge at the end of World War II, so professional musicians began to be hired to augment the amateur volunteers.
Senator Lamar Alexander, water percussionist David Cossin, and virtuoso bassist Edgar Meyer, a graduate of Oak Ridge High School.
[1] In 1952 the symphony presented the premiere performance of Overture to a Dedication of a Nuclear Reactor, composed by Arthur Roberts and considered to be "the first serious musical composition inspired by the atomic age.
The Isotone concerts feature original compositions written as tributes to famous physicists and include scientific equipment from the collection of the American Museum of Science and Energy.