Manhattan Project Scientists: David Hill

The chemistry building at the University of Chicago's Met Lab, where Hill worked during the Project.

Courtesy Atomic Heritage Foundation

Quick Facts

Significance:

David L. Hill was at Chicago Pile 1, worked at the Met Lab at the University of Chicago during WWII, and at Los Alamos from 1954-1958.

Place of Birth:

Booneville, MS

Date of Birth:

November 11, 1919

Place of Death:

Brighton, NY

Date of Death:

December 14, 2008

Among the many talented physicists involved in the Manhattan Project, David Hill (1919-2008) was one who became better known to the world after the war. He graduated from CalTech in 1942, in time to go to Chicago and work with Fermi and the others on Chicago Pile 1, the first human-caused self-sustaining nuclear reaction. He remained as an experimental physicist at the Met Lab until the end of the war. Hill was one of those who signed Szilard’s petition requesting President Truman to not drop the bomb on Japan. He worked at Argonne Laboratory as an associate physicist, leader of Group 7. Hill earned his PhD from Princeton in 1951 and taught at Vanderbilt University. Hill worked in the Theoretical Physics Division of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory from 1954-1958. 

The 2023 movie Oppenheimer featured Hill’s striking testimony against Lewis Strauss at Strauss’ hearing to become Secretary of Commerce in 1959. Hill was speaking in his capacity as a leader of the Federation of American Scientists. The lines are taken from the actual transcripts of the Senate hearing.

In later years he would also be active in the Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He founded and led several private firms, including Nanosecond Systems and a patent enforcement company. Throughout his career Hill was highly respected among nuclear physicists.