"This is a history of the long association of the University of Tennessee with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, dating back to the Manhattan Project. While large-scale partnerships between scientific laboratories and academic institutions are now common, in the aftermath of World War II it was not clear what role this huge research and development program would play in postwar America, but pioneering professors and administrators were determined that one option--dismantling the whole thing--would not happen. Thus began a now eight-decade long association that has flowered into one of the world's largest collaborations between a federal agency and a research university"--