 A legacy of the Manhattan Project was the network of national laboratories , but none was located on the East Coast . Rabi and Ramsey assembled a group of universities in the New York area to lobby for their own national laboratory . When Zacharias , who was now at MIT , heard about it , he set up a rival group at MIT and Harvard . Rabi had discussions with Major General Leslie R. Groves , Jr . , the director of the Manhattan Project , who was willing to go along with a new national laboratory , but only one . Moreover , while the Manhattan Project still had funds , the wartime organization was expected to be phased out when a new authority came into existence . After some bargaining and lobbying by Rabi and others , the two groups came together in January 1946 . Eventually nine universities ( Columbia , Cornell , Harvard , Johns Hopkins , MIT , Princeton , Pennsylvania , Rochester and Yale ) came together , and on 31 January 1947 , a contract was signed with the Atomic Energy Commission ( AEC ) , which had replaced the Manhattan Project , that established the Brookhaven National Laboratory . 
