Women played important roles across the Manhattan Project complex. They worked as nurses, teachers, librarians, and secretaries. They sold and processed war bonds, worked the desks at dormitories and post exchanges, welded, and even monitored the control panels of the calutron.
As Kathy Keith at Los Alamos National Laboratory wrote, “In 1943 Manhattan Project leaders J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie R. Groves scoured the country looking for anyone that would help achieve their goal: to end World War II by building a “gadget” that exploited the newly discovered phenomenon of nuclear fission. They did not discriminate; women or men, young or old, Ph.D. or technical experience—all were considered if they had something to contribute.”