Theodore Petry, Jr., was the last surviving witness to the first sustained nuclear chain reaction, known as the Manhattan Project, which took place under Alonzo Stagg Stadium at the University of Chicago in 1942. He passed away on August 6, 2018. He was one of 49 people who witnessed that first attempt at nuclear power.<\/p>\n
He considered himself to be\u00a0 \u2018a laborer, a gofer\u2019, someone who runs errands for the tech guys – physicists, in this case, but is listed as a lab assistant by the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.uchicago.edu\/features\/a_witness_to_atomic_history\/<\/a><\/p>\n One of 30+ \u2018laborers\u201d hired to build the primitive reactor, stacking wood to support it and building it with the 45,000 graphite blocks that formed its lattice structure. In his own words, when he was 17 a job was a job, and he didn\u2019t question what was going on. He took the bus from his parents\u2019 home in Englewood to the University to work on construction the reactor and used a hydraulic press to turn uranium powder into baseball-sized spheres that formed the fuel for the reactor. He also went downtown to pick up those radioactive materials in little canisters, until his red cell count dropped. After that, it was put into a lead container and he picked it up in a station wagon, instead of carrying it back to the University on a city bus.<\/p>\n An interview with him done in March this year is here:<\/p>\n