Priscilla Duffield

Priscilla (Greene) Duffield graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in political science. In February 1942, she became personal secretary to Ernest O. Lawrence, who was director of the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. She soon began to also assist J. Robert Oppenheimer with secretarial work. When Oppenheimer became head of the new Los Alamos Laboratory, he offered her a position at the lab. She served as the lab’s office manager and handled Oppenheimer’s correspondence. While she was at Los Alamos, she met and married a chemist named Robert Duffield.

After leaving Los Alamos, Duffield worked as secretary and executive assistant to Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. On November 6, 1967, she joined the National Accelerator Laboratory as first lab director Robert Wilson’s first secretary. She remained at the lab until December 31, 1972. Duffield died in 2009.

Priscilla Duffield Content

Priscilla Duffield