Montreal Laboratory - Manhattan Project

Manhattan Project

The laboratory grew quickly to over 300 staff; about half were Canadians recruited by George Laurence. A subgroup of theoreticians was recruited and headed by a Czechoslovak physicist George Placzek. Placzek proved to be a very capable group leader, and generally regarded as the only member of the staff with the stature of the highest scientific rank and close personal contacts to many key physicists involved in the Manhattan project. The Director of the laboratory was Hans von Halban, but he proved to be an unfortunate choice as he was a poor administrator, and did not work well with the National Research Council of Canada. The Americans saw him as a security risk, and objected to the French atomic patents claimed by the Paris Group (in association with ICI). One other scientist at the laboratory was later found to be a security risk: Alan Nunn May. Bruno Pontecorvo, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1950, has long been suspected of having been involved in espionage, but passed all security tests at the time, and no evidence that he was a Soviet agent has ever been established.