Kay Way: The mother of nuclear data

In 1942, Katharine (Kay) Way was teaching physics at the University of Tennessee when a former professor recruited her to join the top-secret Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago. 

Working at UChicago’s now-legendary Metallurgical Laboratory under future Nobel prize-winner Eugene Wigner and alongside Alvin Weinberg — who would go on to be ORNL’s longest-serving lab director — Way spent much of her time analyzing neutron flux data from Enrico Fermi’s nascent nuclear reactor designs. 

These efforts led to the world’s first nuclear reactor, which was hidden under the stands at Stagg Field, the university’s old football stadium. 

While at UChicago, Way also teamed up with Wigner to study the problem of “reactor poisoning” — a condition that occurs when byproducts of nuclear reactions absorb so many neutrons that they slow or stop the chain reaction that powers the reactor. This work became known as the “Wigner-Way approximation for fission product decay.”

“When Wigner moved to Oak Ridge in 1945 to become the laboratory’s director of research, he brought a group of colleagues with him, including Kay Way and Alvin Weinberg,” said Lee Riedinger, a retired University of Tennessee physics professor who has also served at ORNL’s deputy for science and technology. 

A crucial suggestion

In September of 1945, several of Way's friends and colleagues held a dinner for her. 

“It was at that dinner,” said Riedinger, “that she apparently suggested to University of Tennessee physics professor Bill Pollard and Kenneth Hertel, head of UT's Physics Department, that they should do something in Oak Ridge like the universities around Chicago were doing — that is, forming an organization to make use of the Manhattan Project facilities in Chicago, which eventually became Argonne National Laboratory.”

Way’s suggestion led to formation of the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, which became Oak Ridge Associated Universities. 

“ORINS became Bill Pollard's baby,” Riedinger said, “but it was Kay Way's suggestion that gave Pollard the idea that he then carried out. There are people who say that the existence of ORINS was an important part of the decision to keep Oak Ridge's Manhattan Project facilities funded.” 

Focusing on nuclear data

"While at Oak Ridge, Way continued her work with fission product decay and began to focus more intently on collecting and organizing data related to nuclear reactions,” Riedinger said. 

"After the Manhattan Project, she got more interested in the data — the nature of the nuclei that you make when uranium fissions. That was important. People realized that if you're going to work on fission, you’ve got to know what the fission products are and what radioactivity is associated with them. Kay Way realized that, and gathering data on the properties and radioactive decay of nuclei became the focus of her career.”

In 1949, Way left ORNL to head up the new nuclear data group at the National Bureau of Standards — known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology — in Washington, D.C. In 1953 she convinced the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council to create the Nuclear Data Project, which eventually gave birth to the seminal nuclear data journal Nuclear Data Sheets in 1964. 

Later, in 1964, Weinberg, convinced Way to move back to Oak Ridge, where she headed up the lab’s nuclear data group and continued to oversee Nuclear Data Sheets. In 1965, she helped launch a second nuclear data journal, Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables.

In 1968, Way retired from ORNL, took a position at Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory in Durham, North Carolina, and became an adjunct professor at Duke University. However, her presence was still strongly felt in the field of nuclear data as she continued as editor of Nuclear Data Sheets until 1973 and Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables until 1982.

“That was her passion”

“The database that Kay produced was, and is still, very important,” Riedinger said, “not only to researchers doing fundamental nuclear physics experiments, but also to people building nuclear reactors, people doing nuclear forensics and people working in any field that relies on nuclear instruments or nuclear fission.”

“She started collecting nuclear data just after the Manhattan Project ended. She built the research group. She started the nuclear data journals that we depend on today. She built the field of nuclear data. That was her passion.”