In the early 1940s, Adrian Hill Daane was a doctoral chemistry student at Iowa State University, whose laboratory was involved with the Manhattan Project.
He was part of a team that worked on a method to produce large quantities of uranium in a pure form, which was required for an atomic bomb. The team's discovery proved critical to the construction of the atomic bomb that ended World War II.
Dr. Daane worked on the project from 1941 to 1945 yet couldn't tell a soul. Not even immediate family such as his wife, Jean Aurelia Plunkett Daane.
"The day the bomb detonated, he said to my mother, ‘Now I can tell you what I have been doing,' " said a daughter, Ann Daane of Newnan. "It was obvious he had been involved in the war effort, but during the war, she had no idea. It was a secret and he kept it."
Dr. Daane had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which he died from Sunday at his home in Newnan. He was 91. The body has been cremated. McKoon Funeral Home & Crematory of Newnan handled arrangements.
The professor was born in Oklahoma, but lived in Minnesota and Florida. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Florida and entered Iowa State's graduate program in 1941, the year the U.S. entered World War II.
After the war, he completed his doctoral degree and became a chemistry professor at Iowa State. His specialty was rare earth elements and, for his thesis, he discovered a way to prepare samarium, europium and ytterbium.
After 13 years at Iowa State, the professor headed the department of chemistry and physics at Kansas State University from 1963 to 1972. He served as dean of the college of arts and sciences, and dean of the graduate school at the University of Missouri-Rolla, now the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
For the Manhattan Project, Dr. Daane worked in Iowa State's Ames Laboratory, where the scientists' efforts were overseen by Frank Spedding, an expert in the chemistry of rare earths. Dr. Spedding published, with Dr. Daane as co-author, "Chemistry of Rare Earth Elements."
In 1984, Dr. Daane retired and moved with his wife to Newnan to be near children and grandchildren. He was an adjunct chemistry professor at LaGrange College for four years. His wife died last year.
Years ago, this World War II scientist was featured in a story in the Newnan Times Herald that ran on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.
"War is not fair," he said in 2005. "At the time, we had friends that were being killed."
Said his daughter Ann Daane: "To the end, his contention was that this was a way to stop the war and save [American] lives. So he was able to live with his work."
Additional survivors include another daughter, Susan Daane of Duluth; a son, Peter Daane of Newnan; and six grandchildren.
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