Introducing New Finding Aid for Raymond Leroy Murray Papers

 

Report from the 1975 International Astronautical Congress in Lisbon. Found in: Folder 11 Box 1-21.

Following an in-depth survey, organization, and rehousing of documents, a new guide to the Raymond Leroy Murray Papers is available on Special Collections Research Center’s website.  Including material dating from 1919 to 2011 and occupying more than 200 linear feet of shelf space, the collection documents the distinguished career of Dr. Raymond L. Murray, who headed the Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University from 1963 to 1974 and contributed greatly to the study of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste management.

 

 

After studying physics at the University of California at Berkeley (including two courses from Robert J. Oppenheimer), Murray worked at Oak Ridge during World War II as a supervisor in uranium isotope separation production and as a senior physicist in nuclear criticality prevention. He completed his Ph.D. degree at the University of Tennessee in 1950 and began teaching at North Carolina State that same year. Murray assisted in getting the nuclear reactor built on North Carolina State’s campus in the 1950s and enhanced the education of future nuclear engineer students at NCSU, and across the country through his research and publications.  His collection contains early articles (earliest dates to 1935) and declassified government reports (earliest dates to 1919) from the field of physics, nuclear physics, and engineering.  The collection also documents Dr. Murray’s teaching career and his contributions to education through the drafts of the editions of his textbooks, such as Nuclear Energy and Understanding Radioactive Waste.

An illustration from a 1976 NASA Report. Found in: Folder 6 Box 4-17

This diverse collection contains material documenting a wide variety of topics ranging from the Manhattan Project to the development of curricula for teaching nuclear engineering, solar energy, the disaster at Chernobyl, the space program, recovery after Three Mile Island, and many others.  For more details, please view the finding aid here, along with this article from the College of Engineering

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To request materials please look here: www.lib.ncsu.edu/scrc/request .