Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr. (17 August 1896 – 13 July 1970) was a
United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of
the Pentagon and directed the
Manhattan Project, a top secret research project that developed the
atomic bomb during
World War II. As the son of a
United States Army chaplain, Groves lived at a number of Army posts during his childhood. He graduated fourth in his class at the
United States Military Academy at
West Point in 1918 and was commissioned into the
US Army Corps of Engineers. In 1929, he went to
Nicaragua as part of an expedition whose purpose was to conduct a survey for the
Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal. Following the
1931 Nicaragua earthquake, Groves took over responsibility for
Managua's water supply system, for which he was awarded the Nicaraguan Presidential Medal of Merit. He attended the
Command and General Staff School at
Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, in 1935 and 1936, and the
Army War College in 1938 and 1939, after which he was posted to the
War Department General Staff.