Rupert Harold Draeger, who went by R. Harold Draeger, was born October 13th, 1899 in Pipestone, Minnesota. R. Harold Draeger earned a Bachelor of Science and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of California. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the US Navy in the Medical Corps in 1927. He was stationed in various locations over the years including Peking and Tientain, China. He was later assigned as a radiation safety officer and was officer in charge of Atomic Energy Medical Group in the research branch. He was also in charge of the Atomic Defense Division of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. In December, 1945, he received an award along with two other scientists for their paper on "Solid Blast Personal Injury". He later went on to become officer in charge of the Medical Research Section of Joint Task Force ONE and directed biological research during the atomic bomb tests at Bikini, Operation Crossroads. His chief hobbies were geology and mineralogy. Dr. Draeger had an extensive collection of jade, ivory, meteorites, minerals and trinitite that he personally collected from the Trinity site. Dr. Draeger passed away on August 9th, 1988.

Because of his medical position in the Navy, Dr. Draeger had unrestricted access to the Trinity site after the bomb test in 1945-46 and was able to collect an un-specified amount of trinitite from the site shortly after the blast. When he passed away, his son, Erich Draeger inherited his vast collection. Erich sold specimens from his father’s collection over the years to various rock shops and trinitite dealers. Erich passed away in 2018. Erich's wife, Lee passed in 2020 and the collection was inherited by a relative who put it up for sale. I was able to obtain the remaining pieces from his collection in 2020 and 2021.

I believe that Dr. Draeger having early access to the Trinity site is the reason much of his collection is so well preserved and the size of the specimens are larger than what is typically seen today. Trinitite is rare, a 3 - 5 gram specimen is considered large. Many specimens from this collection are in the 5 - 20+ gram range.