Harold M. Agnew
Harold Melvin Agnew (born March 28, 1921 in Denver , Colorado , † September 29, 2013 in Solana Beach , California ) was an American physicist who was director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1970s .
Life
Agnew first studied chemistry at the University of Denver and then worked as a student under Enrico Fermi in 1942 on the construction of the first nuclear reactor in Chicago , where he also suffered radiation. From March 1943 he was in the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos , where he measured the cross sections of neutrons . Agnew was part of the team of scientists accompanying the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb - he carried out pressure measurements during the explosion on an Enola Gay companion bomber over Hiroshima. He then continued his studies with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago , received his doctorate there in 1949 and then returned to Los Alamos to continue working on nuclear weapons development, in particular on the development of hydrogen bombs . Reports by Agnew in the 1950s on the safety of nuclear weapons stationed in Europe led President John F. Kennedy to put Permissive Action Links (PAL) codes on the bombs in 1961. From 1964 to 1970 he was the head of the Weapon Nuclear Engineering Division and from 1970 to 1979 he was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory , which switched to underground testing during his time. In 1978 he successfully opposed a complete stop to nuclear weapons tests planned under President Carter . After the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, he campaigned for cooperation with Russia in securing nuclear weapons and for joint disarmament.
He was also a scientific advisor in the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and from 1961 to 1964 with NATO (Supreme Allied Commander) in Europe. From 1979 to 1985 he was President of General Atomics , which he led in difficult times for the civilian nuclear energy industry. He took office shortly before the Three Mile Island accident.
From 1955 to 1961 he served in the New Mexico Senate .
In 1966 he received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award and in 1978 the Enrico Fermi Prize . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1979), the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Engineering of the USA. In 1967 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society .
literature
- Tom Crouch: Harold Melvin Agnew (1921-2013). In: Nature . Volume 503, No. 7474, 2013, p. 40, doi: 10.1038 / 503040a
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ex-Los Alamos Director Harold Agnew Dies ( Memento of the original from October 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Interview, New York Times, December 1, 1992
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Agnew, Harold M. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Agnew, Harold Melvin (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 28, 1921 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Denver , Colorado |
| DATE OF DEATH | 29th September 2013 |
| Place of death | Solana Beach , California |