George Bogdan Kistiakowsky

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Kistiakowsky (photo on his Los Alamos ID card during WWII)

George Kistiakowsky ( Ukrainian Георгій Богданович Кістяківський / Heorhiy Bohdanowytsch Kistjakiwskyj , scientific. Transliteration Heorhiy Bohdanovyč Kistjakivs'kyj * 18th November 1900 in Kiev , Russian Empire ; † 7. December 1982 ) was a Ukrainian-American chemist and in the development of involved in the first atomic bomb .

Life

Kistiakowsky went to private schools in Kiev and Moscow until the Russian Revolution in 1917 . He was captured by the Bolsheviks and later escaped to Germany , where he received his doctorate in chemistry from Max Bodenstein in Berlin in 1925 .

In 1926, Kistiakowsky emigrated to the USA and taught chemistry first at Princeton University . In 1932 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . From 1930 to 1971 he taught at Harvard University , from 1937 as a professor. In 1933 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1940 to the American Philosophical Society . During the Second World War from 1944 to 1946 he was the head of the explosion department at Los Alamos National Laboratory of Los Alamos with 600 employees who worked on the first atomic bomb. He succeeded Seth Neddermeyer in the department that developed the explosive lenses for the spherical implosion of the nuclear weapon with plutonium . The explosive lenses made from conventional chemical explosives were needed to compress the plutonium sphere in order to reach the critical mass and thereby trigger the atomic fission .

Kistiakowsky was later government advisor (so-called special assistant for science and technology ) to US President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1959 to 1961 and during this time chairman of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC).

In 1977 he became chairman of the Council for a Livable World , which campaigns against nuclear war .

Kistiakowsky has received several awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Priestley Medal from the American Chemical Society . From 1939 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and from 1965 to 1973 its vice-president. In 1967 he received the National Medal of Science .

literature

  • Kistiakowsky A scientist in the white house , Harvard University Press 1976.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of George Bogdan Kistiakowsky at academictree.org, accessed on February 24, 2018.
  2. ^ Member History: George B. Kistiakowsky. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 25, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Kistiakowsky, George Bogdan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ukrainian-American chemist and co-developer of the first atomic bomb
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiev , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 7th December 1982