Abstract.
Robert F. Christy, Institute Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at Caltech, recalls his wartime work at Los Alamos on the critical assembly for the plutonium bomb (“the Christy bomb”); the Alamogordo test, July 16, 1945; the postwar concerns of ALAS (Association of Los Alamos Scientists); his brief return to the University of Chicago and move to Caltech; friendship with and later alienation from Edward Teller; work with Charles and Tommy Lauritsen and William A. Fowler in Caltech’s Kellogg Radiation Laboratory; Freeman Dyson’s Orion Project; work on the meson and RR Lyrae stars; fellowship at Cambridge University; 1950s Vista Project at Caltech; his opposition to the Strategic Defense Initiative; and his post-retirement work for the National Research Council’s Committee on Dosimetry and on inertial-confinement fusion.
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Lippincott, S. A Conversation with Robert F. Christy – Part II. Phys. perspect. 8, 408–450 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-006-0269-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-006-0269-3
Keywords.
- Robert F. Bacher
- Hans A. Bethe
- Harold Brown
- Lee A. DuBridge
- Freeman Dyson
- Richard P. Feynman
- William A. Fowler
- Marvin L. Goldberger
- Charles Lauritsen
- Tommy Lauritsen
- Edwin McMillan
- Robert Marshak
- Seth Neddermeyer
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Edward Teller
- John von Neumann
- Los Alamos
- Manhattan Project
- Vista Project
- Orion Project
- Stategic Defense Initiative
- mesons
- RR Lyrae stars
- dosimetry
- fusion energy