Louis Rosen, physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb, dies.

The "Los Alamos lifer" died at age 91 at his home in New Mexico.

He was one of the last surviving links to the scientific giants who had created the atomic age -- men like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi as well as Dr. Teller. But more than that, he had also advanced the era.

Dr. Rosen was a lifer at Los Alamos. Where other scientists drifted away, he spent his career there, and built the most intense atom smasher in the world. He was also part ambassador, part lobbyist for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, promoting its continuing importance as a center not only of weapons development but also of basic research.

His atom smasher was his most spectacular project. "This monstrous gadget will give us new windows on the nucleus, a new set of probes," he said in an interview with The New York Times.

NYT obit.

[#1 posted by Chairboy, September 7, 2009 7:11 PM]

See? Nuclear technology kills! You fools, when will you learn?

[#2 posted by Anonymous, September 7, 2009 8:01 PM]

Uh, chairboy, did he ever get his fingers dirty working with the atomic bomb?

I mean, was he even around any of the plants where this filthy stuff was concentrated and moved to the assembly point? I doubt very seriously if he was because he lived to that age.

Now check on the workers' survival rates of dealing with this evil stuff. Hell, the kill ratio of the prospectors that dug up the damned ore was approaching 100 per cent in 1970.

Hey, how did that tiny meltdown at three mile island work out? Oh, so there is a significant increase in early deaths, cancer, and birth deformities that now shows where the plume blew?

Damn straight nuclear technology kills. You fool, when will you learn?

[#3 posted by Neuron, September 7, 2009 8:06 PM]

Thanks for posting this. I wasn't familiar with Rosen, although I had done some research at LAMPF when in college, back in the early 80s.

I must also point out what a treat it is to type a comment, then realize I'm not logged in, then go to another page to log in, then type my comment again. Ain't technology marvelous?

[#4 posted by Takuan, September 7, 2009 8:36 PM]

it's a feature

[#5 posted by tallcedars, September 7, 2009 9:39 PM]

I worked for him for years (at LAMPF) and still didn't know most of this stuff about him. Thanks.

I'd known that some (Teller comes to mind) saw the accelerator a tool to attract new scientists to the area for possible recruitment into "other divisions." I hadn't known that this aspect was, reportedly, so fundamental to its creation.

It cost them, though. Loved the million dollar line...

[#6 posted by Pantograph, September 8, 2009 12:08 AM]

#3 Have you not heard about the wonderful invention of copy and paste?

Saves tons of retyping.

[#7 posted by Anonymous, September 8, 2009 2:50 AM]

#2, Hell yeah nuclear technology kills. Friend of mine had a piano fall on him. When they cracked it open, it was full of nuclei.

[#8 posted by monstrinho_do_biscoito, September 8, 2009 4:31 AM]

thanks dude for the nuclear sword of damocles that hangs over every living thing on the this planet. thanks.

[#9 posted by toyg, September 8, 2009 6:49 AM]

Neuron @3: get the Lazarus extension for Firefox, you'll never lose a comment again.