The American development of nuclear weapons during World War II often conjures up the design laboratory on the isolated mesa of Los Alamos, New Mexico, the first nuclear reactor underneath Stagg Field in Chicago, and of course the Manhattan Engineering District. However, the small university town of Princeton, NJ, was far from removed from these momentous developments. This presentation will address three aspects of Princeton’s interventions in the Manhattan Project: Albert Einstein’s ambiguous involvement in these efforts throughout the war; the heavy participation of faculty and students in various aspects of the research; and the penning of the first official history of the Manhattan Project by physics department chair Henry DeWolf Smyth.

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