Leona Woods

Leona Woods (1919 - 1986), later called Leona Woods Marshall and Leona Woods Marshall Libby, was an American physicist who helped build the first nuclear reactor and the first atomic bomb.

At age 23, she was the youngest and only female member of the team which built and experimented with the world's first nuclear reactor (then called a "pile" ), Chicago Pile-1, in a project led by her mentor Enrico Fermi. In particular, Woods was instrumental in the construction and then utilization of geiger counters for analysis during experimentation. She later worked on the Manhattan Project.

Together with her first husband John Marshall, she subsequently solved the problem of xenon poisoning at the Hanford plutonium production site and supervised the construction and operation of Hanford's plutonium production reactors.

In 1960, Woods joined New York University as an associate professor of physics. While there, she was also attached to Brookhaven National Laboratory, where a specialized particle accelerator, a synchrocyclotron, sped subatomic particles around a huge track and physicists studied microfilm photographs of the particles' paths. Dr Marshall, her appellation in that period, supervised a lab in an NYU basement where staff reviewed each frame of miles of microfilm in a search for the mysterious "ess" - a hypothesized particle whose path was thought to shift direction midstream in the shape of an S. The particle was not found.

Three years later, she became a professor at the University of Colorado, researching high-energy physics, astrophysics and cosmology. She later joined her second husband, Nobel laureate Frank Libby, at UCLA, where she became a professor of environmental studies, engineering, engineering archaeology, mechanical aerospace and nuclear engineering.

Woods was also a prolific author. Her works include the autobiographical "The Uranium People" (1979), a history of early atomic research.

Selected bibliography

*"Creation of an atmosphere for the moon" (1969)
*"Fifty environmental problems of timely importance" (1970)
*"Fifty more environmental problems of timely importance" (1970)
*"The Uranium People" (1979)
*"The upside down cosmology and the lack of solar neutrinos" (1980)
*"Life Work of Nobel Laureate Willard Frank Libby" (1982)
*"Past Climates: Tree Thermometers, Commodities, and People" (1983)

ources

* [http://www.hydeparkhistory.org/herald/WomenInTheManhattanProject.pdf Women in the Manhattan Project]
* [http://libcat.pnl.gov/hipres/leona.html Hanford Technical Library]
* [http://arxiv.org/html/physics/0302035 Women in Physics in Fermi's Time]
* [http://www.lths.net/LT_Tradition/Hall_of_Fame/Inductees/libby.html LTHS Hall of Fame]