Donald Mastick

Donald Francis Mastick (September 1, 1920 – September 8, 2007) was an American chemist who worked at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory. As part of Project Alberta, he was part of the planning and preparation for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. Mastick is known for a lab incident in 1944 when he accidentally ingested a small amount of plutonium, traces of which remained detectable in his body decades later. After the incident, he worked for the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory and the Atomic Energy Commission.

Early life Donald Francis Mastick was born in St. Helena, California, the son of Spencer Mastick and his wife Frankie Hite. He grew up in the Napa Valley. He entered the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied chemistry, graduating with his Bachelor of Science degree in 1942. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi honor societies.

Manhattan Project By the time Mastick graduated, the United States had entered World War II. Mastick was studying radioactive carbon. He told Professor Wendell Latimer that he could not stand by while there was a war on, and that he was leaving. Latimer suggested that he instead join a secret project, which would lead to a commission in the United States Navy. He introduced him to Robert Oppenheimer, who recruited him for the Manhattan Project. Initially, Mastick's job was to draw up lists of equipment required by the chemistry laboratories at the Los Alamos Laboratory, which were then under construction.

Mastick moved to Los Alamos early in 1943, where he worked in the Chemistry Division and studied the mysterious chemical properties of plutonium, a synthetic element then available only in microscopic quantities. He became the head of the Radiochemical Research section at the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory San Francisco.

Mastick died in Santa Barbara, California, on September 8, 2007.