Ruth Huddleston (1925-2023) was one of “Calutron girls” that were important for the US success in building nuclear bombs during WW II. Our #13 installment of “Women in Nuclear History” is dedicated to her life story.

1. Ruth was born in Windrock TN on September 8, 1925. She grew up in the small town of Oliver Springs, where she sang in the church choir.
2. Ruth Huddleston was 18 years old when she took a job at a top secret Army facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the height of World War II as one of the Calutron Girls.
3. As a “cubicle operator” on the Y-12 Project, she sat in front of a massive control center covered in meters and gauges, adjusting dials to keep a needle pointing in the right direction.
4. She was working on a calutron that separated uranium 235 radioisotope from the more common, heavier uranium 238. The lighter uranium 235 would eventually be used as fuel for Little Boy, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6th, 1945.
5. Her task was so highly classified that she could not even know the exact purpose of her work. If anybody dare to be more curious about the job or wanted to discuss it was investigated and fired.
6. She was the lifelong learner. After the war Ruth earned her BS degree in Education and MA degree in Guidance and Counseling from the University of Tennessee.
7. She taught two summers at Knoxville College, high and elementary school at Coalfield, and one year at Windrock in the mining camp. Then she served as Guidance Counselor at Coalfield High and Oliver Springs High, completing a total of 36 years in the teaching profession. In total, she worked as an educator for 39 years.
8. She gave the interviews about her job where she shared her thoughts on her work: “I was really happy at the time and excited. But then when I heard later all the people who had been killed, it really, really bothered me because I had a part in killing all those people”.
9. She was married to Lawrence Huddleson, they raised 3 children, partly in Germany where he was stationed in a military.
10. She was a lifelong resident of the Coalfield/Oliver Springs area in TN.. She passed away on February 22, 2023 in the age of 98.