What the document says
This is a telegram sent on April 7, 1944, from A. H. Compton to J. R. Oppenheimer. The subject line is the Dust Program. Compton asks how Oppenheimer wants the plutonium inhalation program handled. That program covers acute studies, meaning short term effects of breathing in plutonium dust. The record files the message under the subject terms HREX, history, and plutonium, and classes it as correspondence.
The telegram puts a choice to Oppenheimer. One option is to run the acute inhalation work as planned earlier, through the group at the Chicago Met Lab. The other is to bring in the University of California, Berkeley, either as part of those plans or by continuing the biological tracer studies in animals at the current level of effort. Tracer studies follow small amounts of a substance as it moves through a living body.
The scanned page in this file carries no readable body text. Only an image identifier came through, so the wording of the telegram itself is not available. What can be stated here comes from the record's own description of the message. Researchers who need the exact language will have to work from a better copy of the original.
Key points
- 01Compton asks Oppenheimer to decide how the plutonium inhalation program, covering acute studies, should be carried out.
- 02One option keeps the work with the group at the Chicago Met Lab, as planned earlier.
- 03The other option involves the University of California, Berkeley, either in those plans or by continuing animal tracer studies at the current level of effort.
- 04The scanned page holds no readable body text, so only the record's description of the telegram is available.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy, OpenNet declassified document archive, OSTI ID 16107369. The summary is written from the document’s own text. Old scans can be hard to read, so check the original for anything you plan to cite.