Floy Agnes Lee

Floy Agnes "Aggie" (Naranjo Stroud) Lee (23 July 1922 - 6 March 2018) was an American biologist who worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos as a hematology technician.

Early life and education Floy Agnes Lee (née Naranjo) was born July 23, 1922, at the Albuquerque Indian School and was the fourth of five siblings. During her college years, she also learned to fly planes and worked at a grocery store to pay for flying lessons. She was one flight short of qualifying to become a member of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots before the program was disbanded in 1944.

In 1945, Professor Edward Castetter, head of UNM's biology department, asked Lee to do research for him. While she was compiling and recording information on what the Indigenous people of New Mexico ate before colonization, Castetter asked her to postpone a trip she had planned to see her mother's relatives to finish the research. While Lee continued this research, Castetter received a call from Los Alamos. They told him that they were looking for a biology student or a graduate to work in the hematology laboratory.

Manhattan Project Lee accepted this position at the hematology lab at Los Alamos in 1945. She collected and examined blood samples from Manhattan Project scientists, including Louis Hempelmann, as well as Louis Slotin and Alvin Graves after the criticality accident that exposed Slotin to a fatal dose of radiation. Lee said that she learned how to take blood, read blood cell counts, and identify blood types on the job, but that she excelled at these tasks once taught. She was sent to different sites of the Manhattan Project where she would draw blood from individuals. While working in the hematology lab at Los Alamos, Lee was assigned specific scientists to monitor, including Enrico Fermi.

Lee and Fermi became friends during this time. In Lee's oral history, conducted by the Atomic Heritage Foundation, she elaborated on her relationship with Fermi: "We got to talking about what I liked to do and what he liked to, and we got on the subject of tennis. Now, I did not know that this was Enrico Fermi. I only knew him as a number, because they wouldn’t give names out. So we would play tennis. This was before the bomb was dropped, and then afterwards also. He was a short man, and he had a funny little hat."

She was a founding member of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society in 1977