Staff Biographies

Jane Hamilton Hall

In the 1940s, the so-called Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago was a crucial center of wartime nuclear research. The work at the Met Lab, however, went beyond metallurgy. It was a place where physicists like Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Glenn Seaborg, and Walter Zinn could move from the theoretical to conduct nuclear-fission experiments.

Working at the Center of Atomic Research
The Met Lab was also a place where a young woman physicist, Jane Hamilton Hall, born in Denver in 1915, became a member of the physics division of this group. She had received her PhD in physics from the University of Chicago in 1942 and then spent 1943 and 1944 working with the other Met Lab physicists brought together from such places as Columbia University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. Her future husband, David Hall, was also a member of this famous Met Lab group.

In 1944 and early 1945, Jane Hall moved on to the Hanford Engineer Works in Washington state as a senior supervisor for the Du Pont Company to, as she described, “babysit the construction of three nuclear reactors.” While working for this contractor of the Manhattan Project, she headed the Special Studies Section, where she assessed the safety of production reactors and investigated the hazards of plutonium inhalation.

Her next move was back to Chicago to the Argonne Laboratory of the Met Lab where she spent a short time as an associate physicist and assistant to the Laboratory Director Enrico Fermi. Working alongside the man who first achieved a controlled nuclear chain reaction was an impressive experience for the 30-year-old Hall. After all it was Fermi’s achievement that created the belief that an atomic bomb could be built.

Beginning Her Long Los Alamos Career
In 1945, Hall moved to Los Alamos and began a 25-year career at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Over that timespan, she accepted leadership positions that underscored her scientific and political standing in the nuclear-energy community of those decades.

In the late 1940s, Jane was involved with the LASL plutonium reactor project. Her Lab associate and friend Jay Wechsler remembers Jane’s comment about that project. Jane remarked, “Even good engineering wouldn’t have made it a very good project.” Nevertheless a list of Hall’s LASL technical papers and reports from 1948-1950 reflects her ongoing interest in the characteristics and modifications of the Los Alamos plutonium reactor.

Recognizing Her Leadership Skills
Her other scientific interests during her LASL career included crystallography, X-ray medical research, neutron physics, reactor development, and cosmic rays. Hall’s technical and leadership achievements during those years led to her appointment as associate director under Director Norris Bradbury. Jay Wechsler remembers Hall in that position:

Jane was a very dynamic person. Norris depended on her to take a lead in this position. Jane could keep vociferous people in line with her quiet manner. Everyone respected her and took well to her leadership. She was the best-organized person I ever met.

Recognition of Hall’s leadership skills spilled beyond the mountains of northern New Mexico when President Lyndon Johnson in 1966 appointed Hall to the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission. This nine-member committee of scientists was created, according to its charter, “to advise the Commission on scientific and technical matters relating to materials, production, and research and development.”

Dealing with National and International Issues
Earlier appointees to the General Advisory Committee included such luminaries as Robert Oppenheimer, I.I. Rabi, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller. During Hall’s tenure on the committee, the members had to wrestle with several issues on radiation exposure, a topic of concern to citizens in many countries around the globe. Hall brought her health-physics and medial-research experience to these discussions.

She also directed her expertise to the many citizens concerned about the safety and the future developments of atomic energy. She had been an activist in the Atomic Scientists of Chicago and after the war joined the executive committee of the Association of Los Alamos Scientists.

Extending Her Expertise to the Community
As noted in Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project, a committee of Laboratory scientists began to form a group concerned with “maintaining a scientific voice in the use of atomic energy.” As early as August 23, 1945, only two weeks after the bombing of Nagasaki, the notice announcing the formation of this committee stated:

Many people have expressed a desire to form an organization of progressive scientists, which has as its primary object to see that the scientific and technological achievements for which they are responsible are used in the best interests of humanity.

Hall worked with this group by sharing her expertise on health physics with radio listeners in the community. Her contributions over the years reached beyond LASL.

Her associate, friend, and neighbor Jay Wechsler comments on Hall’s friendliness and readiness to have a good time. He remembers her laughing with his wife Carol over the antics of a so-called posthypnotic medical specialist in Santa Fe and Jane’s usual party question, “Are we going to dance?”

He concludes, “Jane Hall was a very effective person—one of the best we ever had.”