21 July 2023
EMPORIA (KSNT) – The Manhattan Project, a top-secret project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II, was a collaboration between scientists, engineers, technicians and military personnel.
L. Worth Seagondollar, an American Physicist from Hoisington, Kansas, was one of those who worked on the project at Los Alamos.
Seagondollar earned his A.B. in physics at the Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia, Kansas in 1941. In 1942, Seagondollar was offered a position on the Manhattan Project but canceled two hours before boarding the train because of the number of people already working at Los Alamos, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.
Seagondollar earned his master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1943 and was offered another job at Los Alamos in 1944, which he accepted, according to the AHF.
While at Los Alamos, Seagondollar was part of a small team investigating the plutonium mass and how much would be needed to make a bomb, according to the AHF. Seagondollar’s wife, Winifred Elizabeth (Varner) also worked on the project as an administrative assistant at Los Alamos.
Elizabeth graduated from the Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia and married Seagondollar in 1942. The couple would go on to have three children.
On July 16, 1945, the Trinity Test, the first nuclear weapons test in history would be performed at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, 230 miles from Los Alamos, according to the AHF. Seagondollar attended the test from a safe distance, nine miles away.
Coined by legendary theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the term “Trinity Test” was a reference to a poem called “Batter my heart, three-person’d God” by John Donne, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The Trinity Test created a wave of anxiety in the scientific community with many concerned about the bomb’s deadly potential. The explosion destroyed a 100-foot metal tower, formed a glassed crater and irradiated the site. The radiation levels remain about 10 times higher than the natural background radiation, according to the AHF.
Seagondollar returned to the University of Wisconsin and earned his Ph.D. in Physics in 1948. He then worked at the University of Kansas as a professor until 1965. Seagondollar helped build the first Van de Graff accelerator for research of low-energy nuclear physics.
Seagondollar moved to North Carolina State University in 1965 where he was the chair of the physics department. He worked at North Carolina State University until 1991.
Seagondollar died Sept. 20, 2013 in Raleigh, North Carolina. His wife Winifred died two years later on June 29, 2015 in Raleigh, North Carolina.