John H. Manley; Assisted on Manhattan Project

John H. Manley, 82, who helped J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project build the world’s first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, N.M., during World War II. Previously a lecturer at Columbia University and the University of Illinois, Manley was a research associate in the metallurgical laboratory at the University of Chicago in 1942 when he was recruited for the project. From 1946 to 1951, he served as associate director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was chairman of physics at the University of Washington in Seattle for six years, and he returned to Los Alamos as research adviser from 1957 until his retirement in 1972. In Los Alamos on Monday of heart failure.