Ira B. Whitney was a nuclear chemist who served as one of a nucleus of scientists and physicists – J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Arthur Compton – who worked on the U.S. Manhattan Project from 1943 until after World War II. They developed the world’s first atomic bomb. Whitney served as chief superintendent of processing and purification of plutonium and radioactive isotopes at the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Oak Ridge National Laboratory and shipped the first such isotopes in the country.
Whitney was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a representative of the American Chemical Society on the American National Standards Institute’s N-13 Committee. This agency, founded and maintained by industry and the scientific community, has had numerous committees of experts to develop operation, safety, and performance standards for use throughout the country and the world. The N-13 Committee is responsible for developing safety standards for radiation – for everything from mining through reactors and instrumentation to storage and disposal of nuclear wastes.
A co-author of the first textbook on nuclear chemistry, Whitney continued research at Oak Ridge for 15 years after the war and co-authored four books on radiochemistry from 1949 to 1960. Along with fellow scientists, he published many articles in science journals. One study published in 1953 was titled, “Evidence that Molybdenum is a Nondialyzable Component of Xanthine Oxidase.” Whitney served as Assistant Director of the AEC’s Analytical Laboratory in New York from 1961 to 1967.
During those years in New York, Whitney’s office was across the street from the Gemological Institute of America, and Ira spent extra time earning certification as a gemologist and master watchmaker. Upon retirement in 1968, Ira and Frances moved to Eureka Springs and bought 84 Spring St., where they opened Whitney’s Gems selling jewelry, gifts, and mineral specimens. Ira also offered jewelry and watch repair, and complete lapidary services.
In 1974, I began a weekend apprenticeship with Ira while finishing my degree in Chemistry at the University of Arkansas. I moved to Eureka Springs to work for the Whitneys fulltime in 1976, then continued working with them through the closing of Whitney’s Gems in 1978. Ira gave me all his personal reference books and textbooks from the early ‘40s that had guided him and his fellow scientists through the origin and development of their work in radiochemistry.
After Ira and Frances moved to Sylvan Shores on Beaver Lake, Ira served on the Nuclear Energy Study Task Force, formed by Gov. Bill Clinton, to review study reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (successor to the Atomic Energy Commission) on the March 28, 1979, accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear generating plant near Harrisburg, Penn.
The task force was responsible for evaluating these reports and their relationship to Arkansas Power and Light Company’s Arkansas One, near Russellville. Reactors at both plants were built by the same contractor, Babcock and Wilcox.
Ira Whitney, born in 1909, passed away in Eureka Springs in October 1979.