Although venture capitalists and some giants in the Silicon Valley of the United States don’t take the scientific research projects led by the US government in their eyes, they still have a very eye-catching view of the 17 national laboratories under the US Department of Energy. Argonne National Laboratory is especially respected for its unique history. As early as 1942, Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi came to Chicago when the Manhattan Project was officially launched. Fermi established a temporary laboratory in the basement of the University of Chicago’s Starfield Football Stadium. He called this laboratory “Met Lab”, or “metallurgical laboratory.” He and his partners are highly confidential about this, and even their wives do not know about the major breakthrough of this laboratory-Fermi led the team to realize the world’s first self-sustaining chain reaction of controlled uranium nuclear fission, which opened up humanity. The era of atomic energy. They disclosed the only information to the project director in the form of a password: “The Italian navigator has just landed in the new world.”
“Are the locals friendly to them?” the supervisor replied as planned.
“Everyone is logged in safely, very happy.”
After that, Fermi came to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to help the United States create the world’s first atomic bombs, while the metallurgical laboratory continued to operate under the leadership of others.
The 89-year-old Dieter Glenn has joined the Argonne National Laboratory almost since the Stag-Field era. In short, he has been working in Agung for 60 years. “That’s Green Seaborg,” he said, pointing to a framed photo in the office. Sieborg was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951, and his team synthesized the element plutonium for the first time. Glenn is short in stature and wears a herringbone twill silk jacket. At the age of 14, Glenn and his brother fled to the United States from Nazi Germany at the time. Glenn first attended middle school in Little Rock, Arkansas, and then studied physics at Northwestern University in Illinois. In 1944, he received a bachelor’s degree and came to Stagger-Field. At that time, he was only 21 years old. The Second World War is at a critical stage, and the Allied forces landed in northern France not long ago. The “Manhattan Project” urgently needs young people like him. Glenn was soon dispatched to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where he participated in the manufacture of uranium 235 to meet the needs of the developers of the Los Alamos atomic bomb.
According to Glenn’s estimate, there are about 30,000 people in Oak Ridge. This small town was almost built for this laboratory. Construction is underway here, and there is dust everywhere. Glenn lives in a barracks called West Village 54. The laboratory specially designed a large-scale uranium isotope separator for the production of uranium-235. The National Laboratory was chosen in Oak Ridge because of its proximity to Norris Dam. This dam is the first major project implemented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) after signing the Tennessee River Basin Authority Act. Norris Dam can provide a large amount of electricity needed for the uranium isotope separator.
Eighteen months later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and the Second World War ended shortly afterward. The R&D work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is gradually decreasing. Glenn returned to Stagger-Field and began his graduate studies at the University of Chicago. At this time, the Metallurgical Laboratory has been rated as the first national laboratory in the United States, and he has a lot to do. In fact, scientific research activities are very busy, and everyone feels that the space has become very cramped. So the laboratory sent someone to find a new “home” everywhere, and they finally chose Talger Wood. This 200-acre headland is located 24 miles southwest of Oak Ridge and along Route 66.
In 1936, Evan Freund, the sausage king who invented the unclothed hot dog, named his estate after the Targ Wood Forest of “Alice in Wonderland”. Freund’s character is very eccentric, and his life is extremely luxurious. He put Lewis Carroll’s colorful carvings of Tweed, Tweedan and other characters on both sides of the bark path in the manor. Not only did he keep two chimpanzees and 12 sheep and peacocks as pets, he also kept several champion boxer dogs in an air-conditioned kennel. In order to row a boat in the summer and ice skating in the winter, he specially dug a few small lakes, the lakes are covered with limestone. A friend in the clothing business gave Freund 7 fallow deer, which he readily adopted. The Latin name of the black deer is Dama dama, and its fur is tan at birth, and becomes completely white as an adult.
After learning that the site selection staff of the metallurgical laboratory was going to use Targ Wood as the new home of the laboratory, Freund began to resist. He decided to take “all possible and necessary means to prevent outsiders from encroaching on his territory.” The government’s intention is to buy this land, not the so-called encroachment. However, Freund still tried his best to defend his territory. The dispute lasted for a year, and it was not until Freund died unexpectedly due to a heart attack in 1947 that the U.S. federal government was able to continue the land acquisition plan.
Boxer dogs are easy to move, but fallow deer must be moved to a wildlife park. A few of them couldn’t be caught, so they had to stay and stock them. Later, scientists discovered that the number of deer began to increase. “Sometimes they can be seen roaming in the woods in the morning fog, and they are found squatting on a small mound when it rains at night, or they can be seen through the headlights when driving at night. They are standing by the side of the road.” This has become a unique scenery left by Freund.