Stirling Colgate
| Stirling Colgate | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 14, 1925 New York City, New York |
| Died | December 1, 2013 (aged 88) Los Alamos, New Mexico |
| Citizenship | American |
| Fields | physics |
| Institutions |
Los Alamos National Laboratory New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology |
| Alma mater |
Cornell University University of California, Berkeley |
Stirling Auchincloss Colgate (/ˈkoʊlɡeɪt/; November 14, 1925 – December 1, 2013) was an American physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a professor emeritus of physics, past president at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech) from 1965–1974, and an heir to the Colgate toothpaste family fortune. He was America's premier diagnostician of thermonuclear weapons during the early years at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. While much of his involvement with physics is still highly classified, he made many contributions in the open literature including physics education and astrophysics. He was born in New York City in 1925, to Henry Auchincloss and Jeanette Thurber (née Pruyn) Colgate.
Colgate attended Los Alamos Ranch School until 1942 when a military delegation along with input from Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest O. Lawrence decided to close the school. Colgate and others in the class were then graduated without notice. The following year he attended Cornell University to study electrical engineering.
In 1944 Colgate enlisted in the merchant marine. After Hiroshima, the captain called upon him to "tell us what it means." At that time what he explained was strictly confidential, most of all the description of nuclear fission.
...
Wikipedia