Lloyd Quarterman
Quarterman, Lloyd (1918-1982) was an African American nuclear chemist who was a member of the Manhattan Project team during World War II (1939–1945). The team created the technology that led to the first atomic bomb.
Lloyd Albert Quarterman was born in 1918 in Philadelphia. He graduated from St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1943 and received an M.S. degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in 1952.
From 1943 to 1946, Quarterman worked in the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory, which had been established in 1942 as part of the Manhattan Project. Quarterman and the rest of the Manhattan Project team worked with the nuclear scientist Enrico Fermi to develop the world's first nuclear reactor. They built the reactor beneath the stands of the university's athletic field, Stagg Field. On Dec. 2, 1942, Fermi's team produced the world's first sustained nuclear chain reaction.
The Manhattan Project closed soon after the war, and the Metallurgical Laboratory was moved to a location 27 miles (43 kilometers) southwest of Chicago and renamed Argonne National Laboratory. Quarterman stayed with Argonne for about 30 years.
Quarterman also became known for his research in inorganic chemistry, which deals with chemical substances that do not contain bonds between carbon atoms. He concentrated on forming fluoride compounds and new molecules from fluoride solutions. His work led to the production of the compound xenon tetrafluoride. Because it was thought xenon could not react with other molecules, this was groundbreaking research. To study the molecular makeup of various substances, he devised a “diamond window.” This cell “window” was made of tiny diamonds capable of resisting corrosion by even the most caustic matter. It enabled scientists to study solutions of such difficult-to-handle substances as hydrogen fluoride under an electromagnetic microscope.
Quarterman wrote many scientific articles and belonged to a number of prestigious societies. After suffering a paralyzing illness at the end of his life, Quarterman died in Chicago on July 1, 1982.