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A Conversation with Robert F. Christy – Part II

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