William Shurcliff
William Asahel Shurcliff (March 27, 1909 – June 20, 2006) was an American physicist. Biography Shurcliff was the son of landscape architect Arthur Asahel Shurcliff and Margaret Homer Shurcliff (née Nichols). He received his BA cum laude in 1930, a PhD in physics in 1934, and a degree in business administration in 1935, all from Harvard University. In the 1930s he worked at the Spectrophotometric Laboratory at the Calco Chemical Division of the American Cyanamid Company. Atomic bomb In 1942 he joined the staff of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, where he worked in the Liaison Office, processing technical information obtained from overseas and routing it to divisions within US government research where it could be useful. In May 1942 he was chosen by his boss, Vannevar Bush, to be part of S-1 Section, which would become the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb. Shurcliff's role was specifically to be a censor of patents: he would review patent applications from the private sector which appeared to impinge on topics being developed in secret by the government, and put them under temporary secrecy orders. As he put it, his job was to "locate, examine, and make secret all