Getting Started with the Joseph Platt Papers

Let the surveying begin!

Day 1

I made my way through two boxes today. The first box contained thirty folders of correspondence, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) files, and reprints of physics articles. Have you ever thought about atoms while writing? I hadn’t until today when I came across a nuclear fact sheet (see PIP Atomic Energy Information Kit Nuclear Fact Sheet). Interestingly, “it would take several million atoms to equal the size of the period at the end of this sentence.” How many periods are in a thesis or dissertation? That’s a lot of atoms… The second box contained roughly 130 folders of travel files dating from 1958 to 1966. I am excited to learn more about Joseph Platt’s trip to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris, France in 1960.

Tiara N. Yahnian-Murta