yearbook WWII

Virginia Hall

Virginia Hall was an American spy who served for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services and the British Special Operations Executive during World War II. She was born on April 6, 1906 in Baltimore, Maryland, eventually studying foreign language (French, German, Italian) at Barnard College in New York. In 1931, Hall started working as a clerk at the American embassy in Warsaw, Poland, and in 1932, she was forced to amputate her leg after a hunting accident. After World War II broke out 1939, Hall joined the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) as a special agent, becoming known as "the most dangerous of all Allied spies". After the war, she spent 16 additional years in the CIA.

As a British SOE agent, Virginia Hall posed as a reporter for the New York Post for 15 months while secretly organizing, funding, and arming the French Resistance. She also informed Allied forces about German activities, created sabotage teams to destroy German resources, and helped resuce prisoners of war. In September 1945, Hall became the only female civilian to receive the U.S. Military's Distinguised Service Cross for her service during the war.

Charles Drew

Charles R. Drew, an African American surgeon and researcher who revolutionized the understanding of blood transfusions and developed blooks banks in World War II. Drew was born on June 3, 1904 in Washington D.C. After attending medical school in Canada, Drew developed a method for processing and storing blood plasma at Columbia University. During World War II, he established the National Blood Bank, jointly run by the American Red Cross and the National Research Concil. However, Drew resigned in 1942 after the Red Cross ruled that blood supply would be segregated by the donor's race.

Drew's method for storing blood allowed it to be dehydrated, shipped, and reconstituted just before transfusions. Before, unprocessed blood was perishable and became unusable after several days. He recruited 100,000 blood donors for the U.S. military, and delivered over 5,000 liters of blood to the Blood for Britain Program during the war.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who was born in Wurttemberg, Germany on March 14, 1879. As a child, his family moved to Switzerland, where he earned his diploma in physics and mathematics. After obtaining his doctor's degree in 1905, Einstein became a professor at the University of Berlin, going on to become a German citizen in 1914. However, the rising Nazi movement denounced Einstein and his scientific theories during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He eventually denounced his citizenship in 1933, emigrating to America and taking position as Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton. He became a United States citizen in 1940. After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, even being offered the Presidency of the State of Israel.

Einstein's famous E = mc equation was used to develop the atomic bomb. In 1939, he wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging him to develop an atomic bomb. Although Einstein never participated, his colleagues became important members of the Manhattan Project. During World War II, Albert Einstein was asked to help the American Navy evaluate designs for future weapons system. Einstein developed the theory of relativity, laid the foundation of the photon theory of light, and contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.

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two women at a stand in Greensboro, North Carolina selling war bonds and stamps to support the war effort in 1943

a government poster highlighting the role of women in the war industry during World War II (1941~1945)