| rdfs:comment | - Leslie Richard Groves (August 17, 1896 - July 13, 1970) was the United States Army general who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and the primary military leader in charge of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II.
- Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr. (17 August 1896 – 13 July 1970) was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. As the son of a United States Army chaplain, Groves lived at a number of Army posts during his childhood. He graduated fourth in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1918 and was commissioned into the US Army Corps of Engineers. In 1929, he went to Nicaragua as part of an expedition whose purpose was to conduct a survey for the Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal. Following the 1931 Nicaragua earthquake, Groves took over responsibility for Managua's water supply system, for which he was awarded the Nicaraguan P
- Leslie Groves, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, led the Manhattan Project. He had the rank of Major General during his time on the Manhattan Project. After the war, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General. In 1943, he and Vannevar Bush interviewed Doc Brown for a position with the Manhattan Project. Despite a disastrous interview, Doc was awarded the position.
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| Quote | - First, General Groves is the biggest S.O.B. I have ever worked for. He is most demanding. He is most critical. He is always a driver, never a praiser. He is abrasive and sarcastic. He disregards all normal organizational channels. He is extremely intelligent. He has the guts to make difficult, timely decisions. He is the most egotistical man I know. He knows he is right and so sticks by his decision. He abounds with energy and expects everyone to work as hard or even harder than he does. Although he gave me great responsibility and adequate authority to carry out his mission-type orders, he constantly meddled with my subordinates. However, to compensate for that he had a small staff, which meant that we were not subject to the usual staff-type heckling. He ruthlessly protected the overall project from other government agency interference, which made my task easier. He seldom accepted other agency cooperation and then only on his own terms. During the war and since I have had the opportunity to meet many of our most outstanding leaders in the Army, Navy and Air Force as well as many of our outstanding scientific, engineering and industrial leaders. And in summary, if I had to do my part of the atomic bomb project over again and had the privilege of picking my boss I would pick General Groves.
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| abstract | - Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr. (17 August 1896 – 13 July 1970) was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. As the son of a United States Army chaplain, Groves lived at a number of Army posts during his childhood. He graduated fourth in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1918 and was commissioned into the US Army Corps of Engineers. In 1929, he went to Nicaragua as part of an expedition whose purpose was to conduct a survey for the Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal. Following the 1931 Nicaragua earthquake, Groves took over responsibility for Managua's water supply system, for which he was awarded the Nicaraguan Presidential Medal of Merit. He attended the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1935 and 1936, and the Army War College in 1938 and 1939, after which he was posted to the War Department General Staff. In 1940 Groves, who "had a reputation as a doer, a driver, and a stickler for duty", became special assistant for construction to the Quartermaster General, tasked with inspecting construction sites and checking on their progress. In August 1941, he was given responsibility for the gigantic office complex to house the War Department's 40,000 staff which would ultimately become the Pentagon. In September 1942, Groves took charge of the Manhattan Project. He was involved in most aspects of the atomic bomb's development. He participated in the selection of sites for research and production at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington. He directed the enormous construction effort, made critical decisions on the various methods of isotope separation, acquired raw materials, directed the collection of military intelligence on the German nuclear energy project and helped select the cities in Japan that were chosen as targets. Groves wrapped the Manhattan Project in security but failed to prevent the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from conducting a successful espionage program that stole some of its most important secrets. After the war, Groves remained in charge of the Manhattan Project until responsibility for nuclear weapons production was handed over to the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1947. He then headed the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, which had been created to control the military aspects of nuclear weapons. Groves realized that in the rapidly shrinking postwar military he would not be given any assignment approaching in importance the one he had held in the Manhattan Project, and he decided to leave the Army in 1948. He was promoted to lieutenant general just before his retirement on 29 February 1948 in recognition of his leadership of the bomb program. By a special Act of Congress, his date of rank was backdated to 16 July 1945, the date of the Trinity nuclear test. Groves went on to become a vice-president at Sperry Rand.
- Leslie Richard Groves (August 17, 1896 - July 13, 1970) was the United States Army general who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and the primary military leader in charge of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II.
- Leslie Groves, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, led the Manhattan Project. He had the rank of Major General during his time on the Manhattan Project. After the war, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General. In 1943, he and Vannevar Bush interviewed Doc Brown for a position with the Manhattan Project. Despite a disastrous interview, Doc was awarded the position. In 1962, Groves and Colonel Lomax came to Emmett Brown with the hope that he could invent machine that would allow time travel, so they could prevent the Cuban Missile Crisis from ever happening. After having regrets about accepting their offer, Doc used his prototype temporal field capacitor to send a message to himself in the past. This caused an electrical fire, which burned down the Brown family mansion. As Lomax and Groves believed him to be an insurance thief, the fire prevented Groves from ever asking Emmett about time travel. Lomax and Groves then went to another scientist, Marcus Irving, letting him believe that he was their first choice for the project. Irving agreed to the project, and spent 24 years working on time travel. He could never solve the problem of excess flux energy, so his time experiments were never a complete success. Finally, in January 1986, government funding for Irving's project was terminated. Irving then sought to find out everything he could about the project, and discovered that he was not the first choice. He was jealous of Emmett Brown, for turning them down and for causing him to waste 24 years of his life. While tracking down Doc Brown, Irving discovered that he had built a working DeLorean time machine. He sabotaged the DeLorean and used Doc's design to build a flux capacitor, enabling him to travel through time as well.
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