Explore the inside story of the founding of ORAU
Executive director William G. Pollard, Ph.D., and others break ground for the new ORAU facility in Oak Ridge.
“ORAU: From the Beginning” is the inside story of the founding of ORAU as told primarily by our principal creator and first executive director, William G. Pollard, Ph.D. Select chapters were written by early ORAU luminaries, including Gould A. Andrews, Ph.D., Marshall H. Brucer, M.D., Joseph H. Hamilton, Ph.D., Courtland Randall, Hilton A. Smith, Ph.D., and Alvin M. Weinberg, Ph.D.
Founded as the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies in October 1946 (and later renamed Oak Ridge Associated Universities in 1966), our company had a “clear mandate: to train university researchers in the use of radioisotopes and to act as liaison between the universities and what has become the Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” wrote Philip L. Johnson, ORAU’s second executive director, in the book’s forward.
Pollard and his co-authors share: how the idea of ORAU was conceived and fought for with the help of the University of Tennessee; the gathering of the first universities that comprised the initial Council of Sponsoring Institutions; the expansion of both the Council and the company; early clinical research and the creation of the Medical Division, which ran a cancer hospital and conducted research with marmosets and cotton-top tamarins; how our capabilities changed as the Atomic Energy Commission and then the U.S. Department of Energy made requests to do so; and so much more.
“The history of Oak Ridge Associated Universities is woven of numerous strands: World War II, the Manhattan Project, the creation of the secret city of Oak Ridge and its sophisticated scientific facilities, the desire of universities in the South to develop quality graduate programs in the sciences,” Johnson wrote.
The world has changed a great deal over the nearly eight decades since ORAU’s founding, and we have continually responded and evolved. Consequently, our mandate and our mission have adapted as well. Our subject matter experts, capabilities and innovative thinking continue to benefit the public by integrating academia, government and industry to advance the nation’s learning, health and scientific priorities.