Melvin A. Cook

Melvin Alonzo Cook (October 10, 1911 – October 12, 2000) was an American chemist, most known from his work in explosives, including the development of shaped charges and slurry explosives. Cook was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Born on October 10, 1911 in Garden City, Utah to Alonzo Laker Cook and Maude Osmond, he received a Master of Arts from the University of Utah in 1934 and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale University in 1937. He served as President of IRECO Chemicals (later acquired by Dyno Nobel). He also served as a Professor of Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah. He died on October 12, 2000 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

His son, Merrill Cook, is a Utah politician who served as a U.S. Representative from 1997 to 2001.

His 50+ year career in theoretical and practical explosives spans some remarkable achievements. As an expert in explosives, Melvin was an investigator of the 1947 fertilizer explosion in Texas City, Texas. The Texas City Disaster is considered the worst industrial accident in United States history. In December 1956 he created a new blasting agent using a mixture of ammonium nitrate, aluminum powder, and fuel oil: a most unusual mixture. This explosive, the first of the so-called "slurry explosives," was remarkably safe. He did consulting work for the Iron Ore Company of Canada, where the aluminized ammonium nitrate slurry explosive (with water) he developed was successfully used. His work on slurry explosives paved the way for the development of the BLU-82, nicknamed the "Daisy Cutter" (because of its use in Vietnam to clear helicopter landing zones), one of the largest and most powerful conventional bombs in the U.S. military inventory, using aluminized slurry.

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