Manhattan Project Scientists: Moddie Daniel Taylor

Moddie Taylor worked as a chemist for the Manhattan Project.

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

Quick Facts

Significance:

Chemist at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory

Place of Birth:

Nymph, AL

Date of Birth:

March 3, 1912

Place of Death:

Washington, DC

Date of Death:

September 15, 1976

Born in Alabama in 1912, Moddie Taylor received a BS from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, MO in 1935 and a PhD in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1943. After obtaining his PhD, Taylor stayed at the University of Chicago, working as an associate chemist for the Manhattan Project at the Met Lab and researching chemical properties of rare earth metals. 

After the war, Taylor taught at Lincoln University until 1948 when he became a chemistry professor at Washington, DC’s Howard University. Taylor chaired the chemistry department at Howard from 1969 to 1976, retiring as professor emeritus in April that year. Moddie Daniel Taylor died in Washington, DC on September 15, 1976.