Dr. Joseph William Kennedy, Jr

A Daily Sentinel profile says Kennedy was "relegated to the footnotes of history." The Atomic Heritage Foundation says his instrument verified the plutonium-239 made at Berkeley in February 1941, and that Room 307 of Gilman Hall, where the team worked, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. The Sentinel says Oppenheimer picked him at 26 to lead the Chemistry and Metallurgy Division, and that he kept the plutonium work secret even from his wife. He died in 1957, at 40, of stomach cancer.

What the plaque says

Dr. Joseph William Kennedy, Jr Dr. Joseph William Kennedy, Jr. was born in Nacogdoches on May 30, 1916 and graduated from Nacogdoches High School in 1932 as valedictorian. Kennedy attended Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College and, in 1935, received his B.A. degree in Chemistry with the highest grade point average of any student up to that time. Kennedy graduated from the University of Kansas in 1937 with an M.A. in Chemistry. In 1939, Kennedy received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and joined the faculty as a chemistry instructor. While at U.C. Berkeley, Kennedy and colleagues Arthur Wahl, Glenn Seaborg and Edwin McMillan discovered the element plutonium and developed a method of separating it from other fuel material in a nuclear reactor. Kennedy also designed and built detection instruments, Geiger and proportional counters, ionization chambers and linear amplifiers that were essential to radiochemistry in the early 1940s. Dr. Kennedy began work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Laboratory in March 1943 where he developed and tested the atomic bomb. President Harry Truman awarded Dr. Kennedy the Medal of Merit in 1946, the highest military award for a civilian. After his assignment at Los Alamos, Dr. Kennedy was named chairman of the Chemistry Department at Washington University in St. Louis and pioneered hot labs where tracer atoms were studied. Dr. Kennedy died in May 5, 1957 in Laude, Missouri. At the urging of Dr. Kennedy's family, the board of regents renamed the science auditorium at Stephen F. Austin State University the Joseph W. Kennedy Auditorium on January 23, 1971. (2012)

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Stone Fort Museum — steps away
• Thomas Jefferson Rusk — steps away
• The University Tradition in Nacogdoches — steps away
• Alton W. Birdwell — steps away