J. Carson Mark
Jordan Carson Mark (born July 6, 1913 in Lindsay , Ontario , Canada , † March 2, 1997 ) was an American mathematician and physicist of Canadian descent who developed nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory .
Mark graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics in 1935 and received his PhD in mathematics from Richard Brauer at the University of Toronto in 1938 ( On the Modular Representations of the Group GLH (3, P) ). He then taught mathematics at the University of Manitoba until he worked for the Canadian Research Council in their laboratory in Montreal from 1943 during World War II. He came to the Manhattan Project in May 1945 as part of the British mission to Los Alamos and stayed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory after the war . From 1947 until his retirement in 1973 he headed the theory department (T division) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. There he was a leader in the development of hydrogen bombs in the 1950s. He was often a mediator, for example between Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam , who did not get along well. So Ulam first presented the basic idea of the Teller-Ulam design of the hydrogen bomb to the Los Alamos director Norris Bradbury , before Teller was involved.
In 1958 and 1959 he was scientific advisor to the US delegation at the international conferences on the verification of nuclear weapons tests in Geneva, which eventually led to the Partial Test Ban Treaty . He campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and lectured at the Pugwash conferences, where he opposed, among other things, the view that reactor plutonium could not be used for nuclear weapons. He was on the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.
After his retirement he remained an advisor to the LANL, served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission advisory board on reactor safety and advised the Nuclear Control Institute.
He became a US citizen in the 1950s.
Web links
- Atomic Heritage Foundation
- Oral History Interview with Kenneth Ford, 1995, AIP
- Tim Hilchey, New York Times obituary, March 19, 1997
Individual evidence
- ↑ J. Carson Mark in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
- ^ Carson Mark, Frank von Hippel , Edward Lyman: Explosive Properties of Reactor-Grade Plutonium. Science & Global Security, Volume 4, p. 111, 1993
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mark, J. Carson |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mark, Jordan Carson (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mathematician and physicist of Canadian descent |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 6, 1913 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lindsay , Ontario , Canada |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 2, 1997 |