"DEAR FATHER… IN THE LAB I DID A JOB THAT RATHER PLEASED ME…": ARCHIVE OF LETTERS AND OTHER MATERIAL RELATED TO NUCLEAR PHYSICIST HENRY DEWOLF SMYTH, AUTHOR OF THE SMYTH REPORT
SMYTH, Henry DeWolf. Archive of letters. Various places, 1921-49. Archive of over 40 letters, most autograph and signed, together with four postcards, three photographs, a telegram and other related material. Housed together in a large three-ring binder.
Archive of materials related to nuclear physicist Henry DeWolf Smyth.
Henry DeWolf Smyth was a professor of physics when he wrote what came to be known as the Smyth report, the "remarkably full and candid account of the development work carried out between 1940 and 1945 by the American-directed but internationally recruited team of physicists, under the code name 'Manhattan District,' which culminated in the production of the first atomic bomb" (PMM 422). This archive includes much material from the years before and after that report—including a typed letter signed by Justice William O. Douglas (dated March 16, 1946, on Supreme Court of the United States letterhead), and the 1949 official government printing of Smyth's statement before the Congressional committee on Atomic Energy when he was nominated for the Atomic Energy Commission by President Truman—but focuses mainly on the earlier years of his career, with many signed typed or autograph letters from DeWolf from the years he spent studying at the University of Cambridge in England with Ernest Rutherford. It begins with a 1921 form letter from Cambridge admitting Smyth to the PhD program in atomic physics with Rutherford as his supervisor. This is accompanied by 16 letters and four postcards to his father (a professor at Princeton) and mother. There are also 23 autograph letters signed from Smyth which chronicle his relationship with Mary de Coningh from 1928-35, while Smyth was himself a professor at Princeton; Smythe married Mary in 1936.
A partial inventory of the archive:
Four letters from Charles Henry Smyth (Henry DeWolf Smyth's father).
Three Tributes to J. Robert Oppenheimer (Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, 1967), which includes a tribute from Smyth.
A 1946 typed letter signed from Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
A 1947 typed letter signed from David E. Lilienthal, a member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, on the Commission's letterhead.
A 1948 typed letter signed from Leslie Richard Groves, the Army general who oversaw the Manhattan Project, on the letterhead of the Remington Rand Company (where Groves worked after retiring from the military in 1948).
A 1949 typed letter signed from James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard University, congratulating Smyth on his appointment to the Atomic Energy Commission.
A 1946 broadside advertising a talk by Smyth to the Mercer County chapter of the N.J. Independent Citizen's League on Atomic Energy.
A notice on the publication of the Smyth report, advertising it as being available "about September 15."
A 1946 telegram inviting Smyth to attend a meeting of visiting MIT physicists.
A Senate publication of the "Hearings before the Senate Section of Joint Committee on Atomic Energy" regarding the confirmation of Gordon E. Dean and Smyth as members of the Atomic Energy Commission, publishing each of their formal statements before the committee.
A fine collection.