Lawrence Harding Johnston
Lawrence Harding Johnston (born February 11, 1918 in Shandong , China , † December 4, 2011 in Moscow , Idaho ) was an American physicist and at a young age a contributor to the Manhattan Project . He was the only person to witness all three nuclear explosions in 1945, the Trinity nuclear test and the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki .
Career
After graduating from Hollywood High School in 1936, Johnston received an associate degree from Los Angeles City College. He moved to the University of California at Berkeley, where the future Nobel Prize winner Luis Walter Alvarez was a doctoral student . Johnston received his bachelor's degree in physics in 1940 .
During World War II , he worked on a radar landing procedure at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. In 1944 he followed Alvarez to the Los Alamos Laboratory of the Manhattan Project , where, together with Alvarez, he developed the ignition mechanism for the Mk.3 plutonium bomb Fat Man .
He watched the Trinity nuclear test from a B-29 with fellow Project Alberta members Harold Agnew and Captain "Deak" Parsons . He witnessed the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the escort plane The Great Artiste . Johnston never regretted the role he played in developing the atomic bomb and the bombing raids.
After the war he received his doctorate . His doctoral supervisor was again Alvarez. He did his thesis in 1950 and became an associate professor at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. He later worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center as the head of the electronics department and was a professor at the University of Idaho in Moscow, where he taught until his retirement.
Private
Johnston was the son of a Presbyterian missionary. While studying at Berkeley, Johnston met Mildred (Millie) Hillis, a girl who shared his strong Christian faith. They married and had five children. In retirement, Johnston made several trips to Israel to work on biblical archeology projects.
literature
- Luis Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist. Basic Books, New York 1987, ISBN 0465001157
- Luis W. Alvarez, W. Peter Trower: Discovering Alvarez: selected works of Luis W. Alvarez, with commentary by his students and colleagues. University of Chicago Press, 1987, ISBN 0226813045
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Johnston, Lawrence Harding |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American physicist and collaborator on the Manhattan Project |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 11, 1918 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Shandong , China |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th December 2011 |
| Place of death | Moscow , Idaho |