Charles Allen Thomas | |
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| Born | (1900-02-15)February 15, 1900 Scott County, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Died | March 29, 1982(1982-03-29) (aged 82) Albany, Georgia, U.S. |
| Education | Transylvania University (BA) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS) |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret Stoddard Talbott (1926–1975) Margaret Chandler Porter (1980–1982) |
| Awards | Medal for Merit (1946) IRI Medal(1947) Perkin Medal (1953) Priestley Medal (1955) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Chemistry |
| Institutions | Washington University in St. Louis General Motors Monsanto Dayton Project |
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Charles Allen Thomas (February 15, 1900 – March 29, 1982) was a noted American chemist and businessman, and an important figure in theManhattan Project. He held over 100 patents.
A graduate ofTransylvania College andMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Thomas worked as a research chemist atGeneral Motors as part of a team researchingantiknock agents. This led to the development oftetraethyllead, which was widely used in motor fuels for many decades until its toxicity led to its prohibition. In 1926, he andCarroll A. "Ted" Hochwalt co-founded Thomas & Hochwalt Laboratories inDayton, Ohio, with Thomas as president of the company. It was acquired byMonsanto in 1936, and Thomas would spend the rest of his career with Monsanto, rising to become its president in 1950, and chairman of the board from 1960 to 1965. He researched the chemistry ofhydrocarbons andpolymers, and developed the proton theory ofaluminium chloride, which helped explain a variety of chemical reactions, publishing a book on the subject in 1941.
From 1943 to 1945, he coordinated Manhattan Project work onplutonium purification and production. He also coordinated the development of techniques to industrially refinepolonium for use withberyllium in the triggers of atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project'sDayton Project, part of which was conducted on the estate of his wife's family. Shortly before the war ended, he took over the management of theClinton Laboratories inOak Ridge, Tennessee. Monsanto pulled out of Oak Ridge in December 1947, but became the operator of theMound Laboratories in 1948.Secretary of StateDean Acheson appointed Thomas to serve on a 1946 panel to appraise international atomic inspection, which culminated in theAcheson–Lilienthal Report. In 1953 he was appointed as a consultant to theNational Security Council, and served as U.S. Representative to theUnited Nations Atomic Energy Commission.
Charles Allen Thomas was born on a farm inScott County, Kentucky, the son of aDisciples of Christminister, Charles Allen, and his wife Frances Carrick Thomas. His father died when he was six months old, and he and his mother went to live with his grandmother inLexington, Kentucky, just across the street fromTransylvania College.[1] While living on the farm he was home schooled by his mother and grandmother. After moving to Lexington he attendedHamilton College'spreparatory school, and thenMorton High School. When he was 16, he entered Transylvania College, which awarded him hisBachelor of Arts (AB) degree in 1920. DuringWorld War I, he served in the Student Army Training Corps, and for a time was a rifle instructor atCamp Perry. He then entered theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), from which he received aMaster of Science (MS) degree, majoring inchemistry, in 1924. To help pay for his tuition, he worked as a professional singer, and for a time he considered a career as a vocalist.[1] His singing voice was described by his son as a highbaritone.[2]
In 1923Charles F. Kettering andCarroll A. "Ted" Hochwalt recruited Thomas to work as a research chemist atGeneral Motors (GM). There, he worked withThomas Midgley Jr., as part of Kettering's team researchingantiknock agents. This led to the development oftetraethyllead, which was used in motor fuels for many years before being banned in most parts of the world as a poison. At General Motors, Thomas also worked on a process for extractingbromine fromsea water, and with Midgely on makingsynthetic rubber fromisoprene. Thomas left General Motors in 1924 for a job as a research chemist, a joint venture between GM andEsso to make and sell tetraethyllead gasoline additives.[3][4]
Thomas married Margaret Stoddard Talbott, the sister ofHarold E. Talbott Jr. on September 25, 1926.[5] They had four children: Charles Allen Thomas III, Margaret Talbott, Frances Carrick, and Katharine Tudor.[6] That year, he and Hochwalt co-founded Thomas & Hochwalt Laboratories inDayton, Ohio, with Thomas as president of the company. The company carried out research for various companies, looking into such diverse subjects as a fire extinguisher that would not freeze in unheated buildings, and a means to speed up the aging of whiskey. Their work attracted the attention ofEdgar Monsanto Queeny, the chairman ofMonsanto, who bought Thomas & Hochwalt Laboratories for $1.4 million in Monsanto stock in 1936. Queeny moved Thomas toSt Louis, Missouri, where he became director of Central Research, while Hochwalt remained in Dayton to work on Acrilan, Monsanto'sacrylic fiber.[3][1]
Thomas would spend the rest of his career with Monsanto, becoming a member of its board of directors in 1942, vice president in 1943, executive vice president in 1947, president in 1950, and ultimately chairman of the board from 1960 to 1965. He subsequently served as chairman of Monsanto's Finance Committee from 1965 to 1968. He retired in 1970.[7][8] In this time, Monsanto's annual sales grew from $34 million to $1.9 billion, and its expenditure on research from $6.2 million to 101.4 million.[9] He researched the chemistry ofhydrocarbons andpolymers. In studying the chemical reactions betweenalkenes anddienes, particularly in the presence of analuminium chloridecatalyst, he developed the proton theory of aluminium chloride, which helped explain a variety of chemical reactions, includingcracking,polymerization anddehydrogenation. This research culminated in the publication of his bookAnhydrous Aluminum Chloride in Organic Chemistry in 1941.[8]
In December 1942, duringWorld War II, Thomas joined theNational Defense Research Committee (NDRC) as the Deputy Chief of its Division 8, which was responsible for propellants, explosives and the like.[10] Early in 1943, he traveled to the East withRichard Tolman, a member of the NDRC, andJames B. Conant, the president ofHarvard University and the chairman of the NDRC, to witness a demonstration of a new underwater explosive. Conant and Tolman took the opportunity to quietly investigate Thomas's background. Thomas was then invited to a meeting in Washington DC withBrigadier GeneralLeslie R. Groves, Jr., the director of theManhattan Project, and, as he discovered when he got there, Conant.[11][12][13]
Groves and Conant were hoping to harness his industrial expertise for the benefit of the project.[14] They offered him a post as a deputy toRobert Oppenheimer, at theLos Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, but he did not wish to move his family or give up his responsibilities at Monsanto.[15] Instead he accepted the role of coordinating theplutonium purification and production work being carried out at Los Alamos, theMetallurgical Laboratory in Chicago,Radiation laboratory in Berkeley, andAmes Laboratory in Iowa.[14] Monsanto's Central Research Department began to conduct research on behalf of the Manhattan Project as part of the Manhattan Project'sDayton Project, some of which was conducted on the estate of his wife's family.[16][17]
Initially, there were concerns about the purity of plutonium, an element about which little was known, but Thomas was able to report to Groves and Conant in June 1944 that techniques had been developed that would yield highly pure plutonium, and that the problem was solved.[18] Unfortunately, experiments byEmilio G. Segrè and his P-5 Group at Los Alamos on reactor-produced plutonium showed that it contained impurities in the form of theisotopeplutonium-240, which has a far higher spontaneous fission rate thanplutonium-239, making it unsuitable for use in theThin Mangun-type nuclear weapon design.[19]
Thomas attended a series of crisis meetings in Chicago with Connant, Groves,Arthur Compton,Kenneth Nichols andEnrico Fermi. It was agreed that the isotopes could not be separated, so high-purity plutonium would not be required. Thomas therefore decided to disband his plutonium purification team.[20] The Los Alamos laboratory then turned to the technologically much more difficult task of building animplosion-type nuclear weapon.[19]
Monsanto was already working on a key component of the device. In April 1943,Robert Serber had proposed that instead of relying on spontaneous fission, the chain reaction inside the bomb should be triggered by aneutron initiator. The best-known neutron sources wereradium-beryllium andpolonium-beryllium. The later was chosen as it had a 140-dayhalf life, which made it intense enough to be useful but long-lived enough to be stockpiled. Thomas brought in Monsanto to work on the development of techniques to industrially refine polonium for use with beryllium in theurchin detonators.[21][17]
Thomas established the project in the Runnymede Playhouse on the grounds of his wife's family estate in a wealthy residential section ofOakwood, a suburb of Dayton.[22] He promised the Oakwood City Council that he would return the Runnymede Playhouse building intact after the war, but he was unable to keep this promise because the building became so badly contaminated with radioactivity.[13] The facility, also known as Dayton Unit IV, was in use for nuclear work until 1949 whenMound Laboratories opened inMiamisburg, Ohio. The Playhouse was dismantled in 1950, and buried inOak Ridge, Tennessee.[23]
Thomas was one of a number of scientists who watched their work come to fruition on July 16, 1945, at theTrinity nuclear test.[24] For his work on the project, he received theMedal for Merit from thepresidentHarry S. Truman in 1946.[25] On May 2, 1945, Groves and Thomas agreed that Monsanto would take over the running of theClinton laboratories at Oak Ridge, Tennessee from July 1, 1945.[26] Thomas brought in some 60 new staff from Dayton to help run the Clinton Laboratories, and he persuadedEugene Wigner to come from Chicago to work on new reactor designs. Under Wigner, the Laboratories made a pioneering study ofWigner's disease, the swelling and distortion of thegraphite used as a moderator in reactors due to the neutron bombardment produced in a reactor. Thomas became frustrated with restrictions on spending and the uncertainty about the future of the laboratory. In May 1947, he decided not to renew the contract with theAtomic Energy Commission to operate the Clinton Laboratories on a month-to-month basis while a new operator was found.Union Carbide took over the contract in December 1947. Monsanto was, however, given the contract to operate the new Mound Laboratories in early 1948.[27]
In 1946Secretary of StateDean Acheson appointed Thomas to serve on a panel with Robert Oppenheimer,David Lilienthal,Chester I. Barnard andHarry Winne to appraise international atomic inspection, culminating in theAcheson–Lilienthal Report. In 1951 Truman appointed Thomas to theScience Advisory Committee, an eleven-man committee of prominent scientists to advise on defense planning. In 1953 PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower appointed him a scientific consultant to theNational Security Council, and he was the U.S. Representative to theUnited Nations Atomic Energy Commission.[28] In the wake of theSputnik crisis, Thomas was part of a group that persuadedSecretary of DefenseNeil H. McElroy to establishDARPA.[29]
Thomas served as a trustee of theCarnegie Corporation of New York and theUniversities Research Association, a curator of Transylvania College, chairman of the board of trustees ofWashington University in St. Louis, a member of the Corporation that runs MIT, and the chairman of the board of directors of theWashington University Medical Center. He was also member of the board of directors of several companies, including Chemstrand Corporation,Southwestern Bell, St. Louis Union Trust, the First National Bank in St. Louis, theCentral Institute for the Deaf,Metropolitan Life Insurance,RAND Corporation and the Civic Center Redevelopment Corporation of St. Louis. He was involved with organizations including theBoy Scouts of America,Radio Free Europe and the St Louis Research Council.[30][31]
Thomas was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences at age forty-eight and was one of the founding members of theNational Academy of Engineering.[32][33] He was also a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of theAmerican Philosophical Society.[7][34] In addition, he received over 100 patents, theIndustrial Research InstituteMedal in 1947, theAmerican Institute of Chemists Gold Medal in 1948, the Missouri Award for Distinguished Service in Engineering in 1952, theSociety of Chemical Industry'sPerkin Medal in 1953, theAmerican Chemical SocietyPriestley Medal in 1955,[35] theSociété de Chimie Industrielle (American Section)International Palladium Medal in 1963,[25] theAmerican Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award in 1965,[36] and theSt. Louis Globe-Democrat Man of the Year award in 1966.[25]
Thomas was concerned that the United States did not spend enough money on basic research. To this end he donated $600,000 to Washington University in St. Louis as an endowment for a chair, the Charles Allen Thomas Professor of Chemistry.[29] He rejected the notion large corporations as being driven solely or mainly by greed. In a 1952 speech he enjoined his fellow businessmen to "remember that our businesses and their profits are only a means to an end, a means toward making Americans happier and America a stronger and more unified nation."[7]
In retirement, Thomas spent much of his time managing Magnolia Plantation, a 15,000-acre (6,100 ha) family farm nearAlbany, Georgia, where he employed a staff of 50 and grewpeanuts,pecans,soybeans,corn andtimber.[29] His first wife died in 1975, and he married Margaret Chandler Porter in 1980. He died at his farm on March 29, 1982. He was survived by his second wife and four children.[6] His papers are collected at Washington University in St. Louis.[37]
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