1. Robert Ralph Furman was a civil engineer who during World War II was the chief of foreign intelligence for the Manhattan Engineer District directing espionage against the German nuclear energy project.
16 Facts About Robert Furman
1. 2.
Robert Furman participated in the Alsos Mission, which conducted a series of operations with the intent to place all uranium in Europe into Allied hands, and at the end of the war rounded up German atomic scientists to keep them out of the Soviet Union.
3.
Robert Furman personally escorted half of the uranium-235 necessary for the Little Boy atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian.
4.
Robert Furman was a key figure overseeing the construction of The Pentagon building.
5.
Robert Furman's father was a bank teller, and his mother worked as a riveter during World War II.
6.
Robert Furman attended Princeton University and graduated in 1937 with a degree in civil engineering.
7.
Robert Furman then worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad and a construction company in New York.
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Werner Heisenberg 8.
In December 1940, Furman was activated as a member of the United States Army Reserve and assigned to the Quartermaster Corps Construction Division, where he worked for Colonel Leslie R Groves, Jr.
9.
Robert Furman sent the spy Moe Berg to Switzerland to meet the head of the German project, Werner Heisenberg.
10.
Robert Furman travelled to Rome in June 1944, where he interviewed Italian scientists about the German project.
11.
The barrels were collected and transported to Marseilles, where Robert Furman supervised their loading on a ship bound for the United States.
12.
Robert Furman supervised his detention and that of nine other German scientists, who were taken to Rheims, then Versailles, and finally to the country estate of Farm Hall in England, where their conversations were monitored and where they could not defect to the Soviet Union.
13.
In July 1945, Robert Furman personally escorted half of the uranium-235 necessary for the Little Boy atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian.
14.
Robert Furman left the army the year after the war ended and founded Robert Furman Builders Inc in Rockville, Maryland.
15.
Robert Furman served as president of the local Rotary Club and sang baritone in a barbershop quartet.
16.
Robert Furman retired in 1993, and died of metastatic melanoma on October 14,2008, at Buckingham's Choice retirement community in Adamstown, Maryland, at the age of 93.