Ted Taylor (physicist)
| Ted Taylor | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 11, 1925 Mexico City, Mexico |
| Died | October 28, 2004 (aged 79) Silver Spring, Maryland, USA |
| Citizenship | Mexico, United States |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Institutions | Los Alamos National Laboratory, General Atomics, Defense Atomic Support Agency |
| Alma mater | California Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley and Cornell University |
| Known for | Nuclear weapon designs and nuclear disarmament advocacy |
| Notable awards | E. O. Lawrence Award (1965) |
Theodore Brewster Taylor (July 11, 1925 – October 28, 2004) was a Mexican-born, American theoretical physicist and prominent nuclear weapon designer who later in life became a nuclear disarmament advocate.
Taylor was born in Mexico City, Mexico, the son of a daughter of a congregationalist missionary and a director of the YMCA. He spent much of his childhood in Cuernavaca in the state of Morelos, south of Mexico City. From 1943 to 1946 he served on active duty in the United States Navy. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology, pursued graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell University in 1954.
From 1948 to 1956 he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he gained some fame as a designer of small, efficient nuclear weapons. He was assigned to explore the bounds of fission weapons in an era when most weapons designers were focused on fusion. In 1956 he moved to General Atomics, where he directed Project Orion, with his friend Lew Allen as contract manager. He also was involved in the design of small nuclear reactors to produce radioactive isotopes for medical use, the TRIGA reactors. He led the team that designed the largest pure fission bomb ever detonated, the Super Oralloy Bomb ("SOB"), which had a yield of 500 kilotons in its only test (Ivy King). He similarly designed the small "Scorpion" on the small end of the scale which is documented in John McPhee's The Curve of Binding Energy. This knowledge of bombs requiring minimal amounts of fissile material contributed to his concerns about nuclear terrorism.
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