Location: Eastman Lodge at Bays Mountain

Speaker: Dr. Howard S. Young

Title: Eastman at Oak Ridge

Abstract: Dr. Young went to Oak Ridge in January of 1944 to work for Tennessee Eastman in the research laboratories of the Y-12 plant on the Manhattan Project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He was the junior chemist on the team that provided the chemical process to prepare the tetrafluoride of uranium-235 to send to Los Alamos. The first product was delivered to a U.S. Army courier in the presence of Nobel Prize winner E. O. Lawrence. Dr. Young was drafted into the U.S. Army and then returned to the research laboratories in Y-12 as the first chemist in the stable isotope program at Y-12. After being released from the Army, Dr. Young returned to Brown University in 1946 to complete the Ph.D. program. In 1948, he came to the Research Laboratories of Tennessee Eastman in Kingsport, TN working in the field of catalysis. Dr. Young was born in Birmingham, AL and received a B.S. in chemistry from Birmingham Southern College and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Brown University under Professor Charles A. Kraus. Dr. Young retired as Director of Research in 1989.