1945
Chien-Shiung Wu
Unlocking the atomic age
Few people, when asked about the Manhattan Project
and the weapons it created, call to mind the name Chien-
Shiung Wu. But without the physicist, the project might
have failed, perhaps prolonging World War II into 1946
and beyond. Wu was born in China in a town north of
Shanghai in 1912, to parents who not only believed in edu-
cating girls but also founded a school that took care to in-
clude them. Wu emigrated to the U.S. in 1936, where she
ultimately taught physics at Princeton University, and
where she made two key contributions to building the
bombs that ended the war. The first came in 1942, when
Enrico Fermi was having trouble keeping his plutonium
chain reaction running at a government research complex.
As the tale is told, he was advised to “ask Miss Wu.” She
correctly diagnosed the problem as xenon contamination.
The second was after Wu formally joined the Manhattan
Project, when she helped develop the method for separat-
ing nonfissionable uranium 238 from fissionable U-235—
the bomb’s key fuel. When the weapons were used in 1945
and the war was won, names like Fermi and Oppenheimer
would be recalled best. But all owe some of their notoriety
to the wisdom of Miss Wu. ÑJeffrey KlugerTAYLOR, DAUGHTER JOYCE LEE
AND HUSBAND WILLIE GUYtruths into a search for justice, speaking out and insisting
on prosecution. The NAACP sent Parks—already a mem-
ber of the group—to investigate, and other activists like
W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes joined to form the
Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor, garner-
ing national press coverage. Taylor never received jus-
tice, but her case kindled the civil rights movement and
inspired other black women to speak out about their as-
saults in a time of overwhelming discrimination. In 2011,
the Alabama legislature officially apologized to Taylor for
failing to prosecute her attackers.
Nguyen is founder and CEO of Rise, a nonprofit that
protects the rights of sexual-assault survivors
HALL: LORNA CATLING COLLECTION; TAYLOR: THE CHICAGO DEFENDER; WU: EMILIO SEGRÈ VISUAL ARCHIVES/AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS/SCIENCE SOURCE^43