The Emilio Segrè Visual Archives was thrilled to receive the donation of the Malcolm Thurgood photography collection in October of 2015. This new acquisition consists of 200 photos and 75 letters from Sergeant Malcolm Thurgood, who was assigned to the Alsos Mission as a documentary photographer in 1945. The mission was an effort by US intelligence personnel to discover Germany’s scientific developments during WWII, focusing on their nuclear weapons project. US Army Colonel Boris Pash, a former Manhattan Project security officer, was the military commander and Samuel Goudsmit was the scientific head of the mission. (The Samuel Goudsmit papers are held by the Niels Bohr Library & Archives and are available online at http://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla%3AAR2000-0092.)
During the Alsos Mission, most of the senior German research personnel were taken into custody, including Otto Hahn, Max von Laue, and Werner Heisenberg. Thurgood’s photos document his travels across Europe during the mission, which included experiences such as unearthing buried caches of uranium, working with a team of physicists, including Samuel Goudsmit, and capturing photos of Europe at the beginning of the post-WWII era.
While we begin to archive and digitize the Thurgood photos and letters for long-term preservation and research, we would like to share a few of the many images we’ve archived so far: https://photos.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/photos/photos-of-the-month/november-2015 . Please visit photos.aip.org to see more photos from the Alsos Mission. Check back over the next few months to see all 200 images and letters from the new online collection.
