Norman Hilberry was associate director of the Metallurgical Project, and Richard L. Doan was appointed the Director of the Metallurgical Laboratory. While Doan was an able administrator, he had difficulty being accepted as the head of the laboratory, since he was not an academic. On 5 May 1943, Compton replaced him with Samuel K. Allison, and appointed Henry D. Smyth as associate director. Initially there were three physics groups, headed by Allison, Fermi and Martin D. Whitaker. Frank Spedding was in charge of the Chemistry Division. He was later succeeded by Herbert McCoy, and then by James Franck. Compton placed Robert Oppenheimer in charge of the bomb design effort in June 1942. In November 1942, this became a separate project, known as Project Y, which was located in Los Alamos, New Mexico.