Robert Furman

Robert Ralph Furman was a civil engineer who during World War II was the chief of foreign intelligence for the Manhattan Engineer District directing espionage against the German nuclear energy project. He participated in the Alsos Mission, which conducted a series of operations with the intent to place all uranium in Europe into Allied hands, and at the end of the war rounded up German atomic scientists to keep them out of the Soviet Union. He personally escorted half of the uranium-235 necessary for the Little Boy atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian. He was also a key figure overseeing the construction of The Pentagon building. After the war he founded Furman Builders Inc., a construction company that built hundreds of structures, including the Potomac Mills shopping mall in Woodbridge, Virginia.