IOWA (KTIV) - He was a poor farm boy from Iowa who went on to change the world by refining the elusive ingredient needed to make the atomic bomb.
This edition of “We The People” focuses on Iowan Harley Wilhelm. He is the Iowa State chemistry professor who helped stop a world war and spark the nuclear age.
“The day that the bomb dropped, my grandfather called home and told my grandmother, ‘Turn on the radio. You’ll know what I’ve been doing the last four years.’”
That is just one of the stories Teresa Wilhelm Waldof recalls about her grandfather, Harley Wilhelm.
It was Aug. 6, 1945, when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It was the first of two atomic bomb drops that ended World War II.
But it wasn’t until a year earlier that Wilhelm Waldof’s grandfather, chemistry professor Harley Wilhem, came up with a way to purify the compound uranium after months of experimentation at Iowa State College, which is now Iowa State University.
It was an astonishing accomplishment for a man who had grown up a poorly educated, sharecropper’s son in southern Iowa.
He even got lessons in using proper English from his future wife, Orpha.
“The future mother-in-law did not want her dating this farmer who talked like a hick. And she actually helped him,” said Wilhelm Waldof.
It was his athletic ability that got Harley into Drake University in Des Moines. Years later, he became a chemistry instructor at Iowa State College.
During World War II, it was feared Adolph Hitler and the Germans would develop the first atomic bomb.
But no one could come up with the key element needed to initiate the nuclear chain reaction, the pure uranium that would be used by America’s effort called the Manhattan Project.
Harley Wilhelm and a team conducted experiments that sometimes led to flames in a ramshackle building constructed of corncob wallboard.
“Essentially, they had to learn to be firefighters in addition to doing their production work for uranium. This was a classified project. And if you didn’t have clearance by the U.S. government, you could not enter the building,” said Wilhelm Waldof.
Working on the side, Harley Wilhelm eventually came up with a process to make the pure uranium metal, with Iowa State eventually producing two million pounds of large, cast ingots that would be shipped by train to testing facilities.
It was a shipment guarded by a hobo.
“It was actually an armed guard that was dressed like a hobo to scare away any other hobos that might want to hop onto that train and take a ride,” said Wilhelm Waldof.
During the years of experimentation and production, Harley Wilhelm slept in a separate bedroom at home away from his wife and their family.
“And because he talked in his sleep, he was worried that he might give away secrets and make the family vulnerable,” added Wilhelm Waldof.
Harley Wilhelm went on to create much more than pure uranium and the start of the atomic age. He helped establish the United States Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory on the campus of Iowa State. And he obtained dozens of patents relating to chemistry, metallurgy, and nuclear energy.
Wilhelm Waldof says she knew none of this until a building on the Iowa State campus was named after her grandfather in 1986.
She says the things she discovered blew her mind. That’s why she’s written a book called Wilhelm’s Way.
You can check out at the Sioux City Public Library or find it online.
