Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project records, 1947-2003 (majority within 1950-1980)

Summary

Creator:

Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project.

Abstract:

Intended as a living memorial to former students, faculty, and staff who died in World War II, the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project is dedicated to the study of peacetime applications of atomic energy. The records include significant material relating to the origins of the project and extensive documentation of research conducted over the course of nearly fifty years. In addition, the files include correspondence, minutes, reports, development and director topical files.

Extent:

51 linear feet (in 54 boxes)
10.1 GB

Language:

English.

Call Number:

87278 Bimu C530 2

Authors:

Finding aid prepared by: Helmi Raaska, June 1982 Kathy Steiner, March 2002 Kate Donovan, 2008

Background

Scope and Content:

Records of the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project were received in three major accessions and from three major donors: National Executive Chairman Chester Lang, 1958; Assistant Director Leonard Greenbaum, 1972; and Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project, 2000. In addition, one item, a copy of the Phoenix Project logo, was received from Jacqueline Kolle Haring in 2001. The material is described as two accessions and is primarily comprised of records related to fund-raising, research, and administrative functions. Series include files documenting the history of the project, prospects, donors, research grants, and outreach. Researchers tracking a particular topic should note that there is significant overlap between accessions.

The records of the first two accessions measure three linear feet and date from 1947 to 1959. They are primarily comprised of correspondence, speeches, minutes, financial reports, and research files and are arranged into four series: Chester Lang/National Executive Chairman Files; Fund-raising Campaign; Financial Reports; and Early Research.

The records accessioned between 2000 and 2001 range from 1948 to 1997 and add 46 feet of valuable and significant documentation to the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project record group. While large portions of the records relate to development and fund-raising aspects of the project, there are also important correspondence, research, and committee files. In addition, the accession includes a rich group of materials documenting the history of the project, as well as files regarding the national and international involvement of Phoenix administrators and scientists in the nuclear energy field.

The records are organized into the following series: History; Minutes of Meetings; Development Topical Files; Director's Topical Files; Ford Reactor; Organizations; Prospects; Donors; Research; and Audio Materials. It is important to note that since the years covered in the development topical files and director topical files series overlap, the researcher is advised to examine both runs for material on a given subject.

Biographical / Historical:

In 1947, a War Memorial Committee appointed by the Regents of the university and chaired by Dean of Students, Erich A. Walter, launched a mission to gather ideas and suggestions from prominent individuals around the world for a living memorial to the 583 students and faculty who lost their lives in World War II. On May 1, 1948, the Regents approved the recommendation of the committee for a research center that would become a "comprehensive, non-classified, university-wide program of study of the peaceful applications and implications of atomic energy, as it affects society, education, industry, technology, and the whole body of scientific knowledge." (Box 4, Background Material, "The Phoenix Associates of the University of Michigan.") The program was given a name that evoked powerful symbols of hope and new life arising from the ashes of war. Within ten years, the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project was foremost among educational institutions of the world in exploring and developing peaceful uses of the atom.

The official beginning of a "chain reaction" appeal to Michigan alumni to raise funds for the research center was on October 2, 1950. Signaling the opening was a full day and evening of meetings and rallies held in cities and towns around the world "linked by telephone broadcast." "Using the Atom to Strengthen America" was the theme of this first Atom Day. Atom Day subsequently became an annual tradition and a vehicle for bringing together prominent speakers and dignitaries to report to the public and industry on activities of the program.

The original fund-raising campaign was highly structured, well organized, and infused from the start with the energy and the commitment of a broad base of Michigan alumni nationwide. Fourteen national regional committees were established with Chester H. Lang at the head as National Executive Chairman and university president Alexander Ruthven actively participating. In the first ten years, 30,000 individuals and 350 commercial firms contributed a total of $8 million to support the project. Also in its first decade, the project sponsored 185 research investigations by faculty members in fifteen of the university's seventeen schools and colleges. From these studies, more than 400 technical publications were published. A key factor in the success of the project was the broad participation encouraged across campus, an aspect promoted and maintained from the start under the leadership of physicist and dean of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Ralph A. Sawyer, the first director of the project.

As early as 1951, substantial research was under way in the study of food preservation, the preservation of metal surfaces, and age determination of pre-historic organic materials. It wasn't long before the Phoenix Project began to play an exemplary role at the university in atomic law, atomic medicine, and radiochemistry. In 1952, the Survey Research Center began a study on the impact of atomic energy on the American public, the law school began a broad investigation of the legal implications of the Atomic Energy Act, and a memorial fund for cancer research was created in honor of Alice Crocker Lloyd, former dean of women. In subsequent years, investigations expanded to scores of disciplines ranging from anthropology to zoology.

A 1952 annual report noted that financial goals were reached and surpassed and that construction on a building would begin the following year. It would house facilities for safe handling and storage of high-level radiation sources containing laboratories for work in radiochemistry, engineering, botany, the health sciences, physics, and other fields. In 1955 bids were opened for a nuclear reactor to be built in a special unit at the north end of the Phoenix Laboratory funded through a $1 million Ford Motor Company donation. The reactor, the first ever requested for construction by an agency other than the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and one of the most powerful sources of nuclear fission outside the facilities of AEC, was dedicated on Atom Day in 1956. By 1957, the program included seven laboratories for atomic research built or equipped with Phoenix funds: Phoenix Memorial Laboratory, Ford Nuclear Reactor, Alice Crocker Lloyd Radiation Center, Alice Lloyd Memorial Center, Phoenix Radioisotope Laboratory, Plant Nutrition Laboratory, and Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory.

In 1957, the Regents provided authorization for seeking $2 million in undesignated funds to be used for continuation of what had become the largest academic teaching and training program in the world in the field of nuclear research. Equipment and research had usurped most of the original $8 million, and discussions were inaugurated for a second campaign, geared toward implementing a five-year plan, this time in collaboration with the Development Council. (One of the early derivatives of the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project campaign was the establishment of an ongoing fund-raising organization for the university. Early in 1951, the project's National Executive Committee submitted a resolution to the Board of Regents recommending such a unit, and in May of 1952, the Development Council was formally organized. Campaign efforts were thereafter designed collaboratively.)

The project garnered national and international attention as funds supporting research led to fundamental scientific discoveries, most notably Donald Glaser's development of the liquid bubble chamber, which makes possible rapid, easily interpreted photographs of rare atomic interactions. Dr. Glaser, who received the Nobel Prize in 1960, conducted his original research under the auspices and with the financial support of the Phoenix Project after other agencies had rejected his idea. Glaser, by then professor of physics at the University of California, returned to Ann Arbor in 1961 to give the first Phoenix-sponsored Dewey F. Fagerburg Memorial Lecture, a venue designed to feature distinguished contributors in the nuclear energy field. The following year, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer was invited to the podium, speaking before one of the largest audiences ever in attendance at Rackham Lecture Hall.

Over the years, the laboratories were visited by hundreds of scientists, individuals, and government officials. In 1955, University of Michigan scientists participated considerably at the International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva. Worldwide interest in these issues led to the founding of the International Cooperation Administration (ICA), an arm of the AEC. Under a contract with ICA, Phoenix became the primary consulting agency for providing expert advice to foreign countries initiating atomic energy programs.

From the mid-1960s, the Phoenix Project and its associated facilities were overseen by a director reporting to the university's vice president for research and an executive committee composed of faculty members from across campus. Faculty executive committee responsibilities included budgeting and long-term planning. The committee was charged with relating the work of Phoenix to the university's instruction and research programs. By 1996, the number of research projects funded and completed had reached 816. However, the actual share of university users of the reactor had dwindled to about twenty-five percent, with industry and government accounting for the rest. At the same time, since the early 1980s the budget to run the Ford Reactor came primarily from the university itself with little support from the government or the AEC.

In the late 1990s, with federal funding for nonmilitary nuclear research at low ebb, universities across the country began to shut down their reactors. In December 2000, University of Michigan Regents announced that because the operation continued to drain over $1 million a year from the university budget, formal processes were under way to decommission the reactor. Former university president James J. Duderstadt (who himself was attracted to the university's engineering school because of the Phoenix Project and was at the time of the announcement a key advisor to the secretary of energy and chair of the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee) began with a host of other scientists, to lobby for federal funds to keep academic reactors running.

Although the Ford Reactor, a cornerstone of the Phoenix Project, was officially decommissioned in 2003, the Project itself was continued with a new purpose. In 2004, the Phoenix Project was given new life as the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute, and was charged with spearheading the University's efforts in interdisciplinary energy research, policy, and education. In their vote to broaden the Phoenix Project's charter beyond atomic energy, the University's Board of Regents expanded the Project's scope to encompass all forms of energy, and ensured the continued legacy of the Phoenix Project by noting that the Energy Institute would promote "research on the development of energy policies that will promote world peace, the responsible use of the environment, and economic prosperity."

Directors of the Phoenix Center

Date	Event
1951-1959	Dr. Ralph A. Sawyer
1959-1961	Henry J. Gomberg
1961-1989	William Kerr
1989-1998	Ronald F. Fleming
1998-2001	John C. Lee (Interim Director)
2001-2003	David Wehe

Acquisition Information:

Major accessions were received from: Chester Lang, 1958 (donor no. 3096 ) and Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project, 1972, 2000 and 2008 (donor no. 5276 )

Processing information:

In preparing digital material for long-term preservation and access, the Bentley Historical Library adheres to professional best practices and standards to ensure that content will retain its authenticity and integrity. For more information on procedures for the ingest and processing of digital materials, please see Bentley Historical Library Digital Processing Note. Access to digital material may be provided either as a direct link to an individual file or as a downloadable package of files bundled in a zip file.

Related

Additional Descriptive Data:

Related Material

Publications produced by the Phoenix Project are cataloged and described separately under the title Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project Publications, 1949-ongoing.

The University of Michigan Media Resources Center record group includes film footage of the dedication of the Ford Nuclear Reactor and miscellaneous footage of the research activities at the reactor.

Alternative Form Available:

Digitization: The Library has undertaken the digitization of a number of sound recordings within this collection. The resulting audio files are available for playback only in the Bentley Library Reading Room. Links to item images and additional information are available within this finding aid. Original sound recordings are only available for staff use.

Subjects

Click on terms below to find any related finding aids on this site.

Subjects:

Nuclear energy -- Research.
Educational fund raising -- Michigan -- Ann Arbor.
War memorials -- Michigan -- Ann Arbor.
Nuclear energy -- Study and teaching.
Nuclear energy.

Formats:

Sound recordings.
Photographs.

Names:

University of Michigan -- Finance.
University of Michigan -- Research.
University of Michigan -- Alumni and alumnae.
Ford Nuclear Reactor.
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
University of Michigan. Development Council.
Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project.
Gomberg, H. J. (Henry Jacob), 1918-1995.
Kerr, Walter, 1913-1996.
Sawyer, Ralph A. (Ralph Alanson), 1895-1978.
Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963.
Lang, Chester Henry, 1893-1961.
Ruthven, Alexander Grant, 1882-1971.
Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969.
Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 1904-1967.
Glaser, Donald A.