ArchiveJuly 2017

In March 1954, Oliver Townsend from America’s nascent nuclear energy organization, the Atomic Industrial Forum, wrote to Walter Zinn, head of Argonne National Laboratory, asking him to attend a May meeting. Zinn responded: I do not like to make speeches. My reaction to speech-making is mostly based on the fact that there is hardly ever any new information available, and I am rather weary of. . .

In early 1955, Walter Zinn, head of Argonne National Laboratory, was a key player in the US push into nuclear energy. Engineers were moving into the domain of the physicists but even then, nearly a decade after the end of World War II, much was unclear about the behavior of particles and substances in the midst of fission. Experienced, capable physicists were like gold and Bernard Spinrad. . .