Dr. Joseph William Kennedy, Jr
Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A Nacogdoches valedictorian who took his degree from Stephen F. Austin with the highest marks the college had seen, Joseph William Kennedy went on to Berkeley, where in 1940 he and colleagues Glenn Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, and Arthur Wahl discovered the element plutonium. He built the detection instruments essential to early radiochemistry and, from 1943, helped develop and test the atomic bomb on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, earning the Medal of Merit from President Truman. He later chaired chemistry at Washington University before his death in 1957.
Why it matters
A small-town Texas prodigy stood at the center of one of the 20th century's most consequential scientific breakthroughs, linking Nacogdoches directly to the dawn of the nuclear age.
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Related people
- · Joseph William Kennedy Jr.
- · Glenn Seaborg
- · Edwin McMillan
- · Arthur Wahl
- · Harry Truman
Related events
- · Discovery of plutonium
- · Manhattan Project
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College During World War II
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Paul Lewis Boynton
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Women's Army Corps School
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When World War II drained young men — and students — from campuses across the country, the U.S. Army turned college classrooms into training grounds for its newest recruits: women. With enrollment at Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College fallen below 500, the Army opened Administration School No. 1 here in 1943 to teach members of the Women's Army Corps the clerical and administrative trades of a modern military. Housed in the dormitories and drilled in six-week courses, roughly 3,000 women passed through before the school closed in 1944, each graduating class thanking the town with a variety show at the high school.
Birdwell Field, Aikman Gym and the Women's Recreation Center
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