Atomic Librarian

Herman H. Fussler

Dr. Herman H. Fussler, Librarian for the Manhattan Project

Dr. Herman H. Fussler ( 1914 – 1997) was an American librarian, library administrator, teacher, writer and editor, who was a pioneer in the use of microphotography. He was director of the University of Chicago libraries from 1948 to 1971 and instrumental in the founding of the Regenstein Library. He was Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate Library School. He helped establish the Center for Research Libraries. He was an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He was also the Atomic Librarian¹ for the Manhattan Project.²

Fussler and Microphotography

Fussler built a microphotographic laboratory on the Chicago campus under the auspices of the university library as an experimental and testing facility as well as a producer of film. In the 1930s microfilm was high-tech.

Fussler took the new facility to be demonstrated at the World Congress of Universal Documentation in the summer of 1937.³ The exhibit showed equipment, but also produced a substantial amount of microfilm— files of French revolutionary journals not available in the United States. Also copied were sections of a number of French newspapers for which files in the U.S.. ⁴

Fussler and the Manhattan Project

In 1942, Fussler was approached by John Archibald Wheeler, a mathematical physicist at Princeton, who was at the University of Chicago as an early member of the research staff of a secret scientific operation known to the general university community as "the metallurgical laboratory."

This project was the central point of what ultimately became the Manhattan Project which produced controlled nuclear fission. Wheeler proposed to Fussler that he undertake the management of the library resources of the metallurgical laboratory and fulfill certain other information-related responsibilities not then precisely identified. He became librarian and assistant director of the information division of the metallurgical laboratory of the Manhattan Project.⁵

Fussler’s new position involved two sets of responsibilities- one was to administer the libraries needed by the laboratory, and the second was the rather complex task of organizing and managing some aspects related to the duplication and distribution within the laboratory of the internal reports on its scientific and technical work. This last involved, of course, serious issues regarding security, document control, confidentiality, and "need to know," and, at a later date, some aspects of the transfer of classified information among the various national laboratories that were yet to be established.⁶

It was also Fussler’s responsibility to read the quite voluminous reports of the various sections of the laboratory prior to their distribution to look for the accidental inclusion of subjects or terminology (the terms plutonium and uranium, for example, were never used in these documents) that were to be avoided entirely or limited to certain scientific groups, and to assign security classifications to all such documents ranging from "restricted" to "secret limited."

Fussler was also in charge of the general systems for the distribution of, and accountability for, these reports, each copy of which was numbered. In addition, he was responsible for the establishment and maintenance of a retrieval system for the content of the scientific and technical report material for the use of members of the scientific and technical staff. His position was a "sensitive" one, to use the term made popular by the intelligence community.

In the early days, when the project staff was still small, there were weekly staff seminars, at which Enrico Fermi and other senior scientists⁷ discussed the work that was going on in a style "that usually seemed unbelievably lucid despite the levels of mathematics and physics involved." Among the information division's responsibilities was the distribution of reports from to other parts of the project, that is, Los Alamos, Hanford, Oak Ridge, Argonne laboratories.

Fussler was offered the headship of the Oak Ridge information service, but he elected to remain at the University of Chicago. The blinding flash that fused the sands of Alamogordo signaled the beginning of the end of the Manhattan Project. During peacetime, atomic and nuclear research continued at Chicago under the general direction of Enrico Fermi, but Fussler retired from the Manhattan Project in 1945 and resumed his work in the library. ⁸

Truman Library -"Out of the Archives: The Atomic Bomb."

"Out of the Archives: The Atomic Bomb," was a webinar presented on July 30, 2020, in honor of the 75th anniversary of Truman's decision to drop the bomb, and featured Truman Library Education Director Mark Adams.

1. Atomic Heritage Foundation. Profile of Herman H. Fussler.

2. This article details Fussler’s work with the Manhattan Project. Shera, Jesse H. “Herman Howe Fussler.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 53, no. 3 (1983): 215–53.

Shera Hermanhowefussler 1983

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3. World Congress of Universal Documentation. See: Rayward, W. Boyd. (1983) “The International Exposition and the World Documentation Congress, Paris 1937.” The Library Quarterly 53.3 (1983): 254–268 and Fussler, Herman H. “American Microphotography at the Paris Exposition.” ALA Bulletin (Volume 32, Number 2, February 1938, pages 104–106.

4. Fussler, Herman H. "Progress in Microphotography in the United States." In Textes des com- munications. Congres Mondial de la Documentation Universelle, Paris, August 16-21, 1937.

5. Manhattan Project Background Information and Preservation Work. U. S. Department of Energy.

6. Shera, Jesse H. “Herman Howe Fussler.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 53, no. 3 (1983): 215–53.

7. Snow, C. P. (1981). The Physicists: A Generation that Changed the World. Boston: Little Brown.

8. Ibid.