Frank G. Foote (1906-1998)

Frank G. Foote, Principal Metallurgist at the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory and former Director of Argonne Nat'l Laboratory's Metallurgy Division, died on Nov. 17, 1998. Foote received a master's degree in chemistry from Ohio State in 1930 and a doctorate in metallurgy from Columbia U. in 1941. His principal research interest was the study of the structure of solids by x-ray diffraction; his and E.R. Jette's paper on the defect structure of FeO, published in volume I of the Journal of Chemical Physics, is a classic. Foote joined the Manhattan Project in Chicago in 1943. In May of 1946, Foote returned to the School of Mines of Columbia U. He returned to Argonne as director of the Metallurgy Division (1948-1966). He believed that the study of highly anisotropic materials such as uranium and plutonium would yield insights not obtained from studies on materials of higher symmetry, and enthusiastically supported basic research on U and Pu, production of pure materials, growth of single crystals, measurements of elastic, electrical, magnetic and structural properties, deformation mechanisms, alloy phase diagrams, radiation damage, corrosion, etc. He presented a review of this work at the 1955 Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva. Frank Foote was a fellow of the AAAS and the American Nuclear Society, and a member of the American Society for Metals, the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum engineers, the American Physical Society, and the ACA. He was a quiet scholarly, kind man. He never lost his interest in science or the people he worked with. He is remembered for his sterling qualities, and for his leadership in one of the most exciting periods of science and technology in American history