vessel (known as a "bomb") and heating it. They were able to reproduce Goggin's results in August 1942, and by September, the Ames Project had produced a ingot. Starting in July 1943, Mallinckrodt, Union Carbide, and DuPont began producing uranium by the Ames process, and Ames phased out its own production by early 1945. As a result, the Ames Laboratory never moved to Chicago, but Spedding was present at the University of Chicago on 2 December 1942, to witness the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in Fermi's Chicago Pile-1. Throughout the war, the laboratory held regular information sessions known as "Speddinars". In addition to its work with uranium, the Ames Laboratory produced of extremely pure cerium for the cerium sulphide crucibles used by the plutonium metallurgists. Fears that world supplies of uranium were limited led to experiments with thorium, which could be irradiated to produce fissile uranium-233. A calcium reduction process was developed for thorium, and some was produced. Later life After World War II, Spedding founded the Institute for Atomic Research and the Ames Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission. He directed the Ames Laboratory from its founding in 1947 until 1968. It was initially established on the grounds of Iowa State College. Permanent buildings were constructed that were opened in 1948 and 1950, and subsequently named Wilhelm Hall and Spedding Hall. Spedding was "universally acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost experts on the identification and separation of rare earths". He developed an ion-exchange method of separating and purifying rare earth elements using ion-exchange resins. He later used ion exchange to separate isotopes of individual elements, including hundreds of grams of almost pure nitrogen-15. During his career, Spedding published over 260 peer-reviewed papers, and held 22 patents in his own name and jointly with others. Some 88 students received their Ph.D. degree under his supervision. After his retirement in 1972, he authored 60 books. He received the William H. Nichols Award from the American Chemical Society in 1952, the James Douglas Gold Medal from the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers in 1961 and the Francis J. Clamer Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1969. He was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in chemistry, but never won. An award called the Frank H. Spedding Award is presented at the annual Rare Earth Research Conference. Spedding suffered a stroke in November 1984, and was hospitalised,