Harold Agnew

Harold M. Agnew
Harold M. Agnew in 1955
Born	(1921-03-28)March 28, 1921 Denver, Colorado
Died	September 29, 2013(2013-09-29) (aged 92) Solana Beach, California
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	University of Denver, A.B. University of Chicago M.S. University of Chicago Ph.D.
Known for	Succeeded Norris Bradbury as director at Los Alamos
Awards	Enrico Fermi Award, 1978
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Los Alamos
Doctoral advisor	Enrico Fermi

Harold Melvin Agnew (March 28, 1921 – September 29, 2013) was an American physicist, best known for having flown as a scientific observer on the Hiroshima bombing mission and, later, as the third director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Early life and education

Harold Melvin Agnew was born in Denver, Colorado on March 28, 1921, the only child of a pair of stonecutters. He attended South Denver High School, and entered the University of Denver, where he majored in chemistry. He was a strong athlete who pitched for the university softball that won a championship. He left the University of Denver in January 1942, but had enough credits to graduate Phi Beta Kappa with his Bachelor of Arts degree in June, and he received a scholarship to Yale University.

World War II

After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Pacific War, Agnew and his girlfriend Beverly, a fellow graduate South Denver High School and the University of Denver, attempted to join the United States Army Air Corps together. They were persuaded not to sign the enlistment papers. Instead, Joyce C. Stearns, the head of the physics department at the University of Denver, persuaded Agnew to come with him to the University of Chicago, where Stearns became the deputy head of the Metallurgical Laboratory. Although Agnew had enough credits to graduate, Beverly did not and had to remain behind. They were married in Denver on May 2, 1942. They then went to Chicago, where Beverly became a secretary to Richard L. Doan, then head of the Metallurgical Laboratory. Agnew and Beverly had two children, a daughter Nancy, and a son, John.

Harold Agnew on Tinian in 1945, carrying the plutonium core of the Nagasaki Fat man bomb

At the Metallurgical Laboratory, Agnew worked with Enrico Fermi, Walter Zinn and Herbert L. Anderson. There, he was involved in the construction of Chicago Pile-1. Initially, Agnew worked with the instrumentation. The Geiger counters were calibrated using a radon-beryllium source, and Agnew received too high a dose of radiation. He was then put to work stacking the graphite bricks that were the reactor's neutron moderator. He witnessing the first controlled nuclear chain reaction when the reactor went critical on December 2, 1942.

Agnew and Beverly moved to the Los Alamos Laboratory in March 1943. Agnew, Beverly and Bernard Waldman first went to the University of Illinois, where the men disassembled the Cockcroft-Walton generator and particle accelerator while Beverly catalogued all the parts. The parts were shipped to New Mexico, where Agnew and Beverly met up with them, and rode the tucks hauling them to the Los Alamos Laboratory. There, Beverly worked a secretary, initially with Robert Oppenheimer and his secretary Priscilla Green. She then became secretary to Robert Bacher, the head of Physics (P) Division, and later the Gadget (G) Division, for the rest of the war. Agnew's job was to reassemble the accelerator, which was then used for experiments by Hohn Manley's group.

Los Alamos ID badges

• 
  Harold Agnew
• 
  Beverly Agnew

When experimental work wound down, Agnew was transferred to Project Alberta, working as part of Luis W. Alvarez's group, whose role was to monitor the yield of nuclear explosion. With Alvarez and Lawrence H. Johnson, Agnew had devised a method for measuring the yield of the nuclear blast by dropping pressure gauges on parachutes and telemetering the readings back to the plane. In June 1945, he was issued with an Army uniform and dog tags at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, and was flown to Tinian in the Western Pacific in a C-54 of the 509th Composite Group. Agnew's first task was to install his yield measurement instrumentation in the Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft The Great Artiste.

During the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945, Agnew, along with Alvarez and Johnson, flew as a scientific observer in the The Great Artiste, piloted by Charles Sweeney, which tailed the Enola Gay as the instrumentation aircraft. Agnew later recalled, "After we dropped our gauges I remember we made a sharp turn to the right so that we would not get caught in the blast - but we still got badly shaken up by it." He brought along a movie camera and took the only existing movies of the Hiroshima event as seen from the air.

Los Alamos years

Agnew returned to the University of Chicago in 1946, where he completed his graduate work under Fermi. Agnew and Beverly stayed with Fermi and his family, due to the post-war housing shortage. He received his Master of Science (MS) degree in 1948 and his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1949, writing his thesis on "The beta spectra of Cs137, Y91, Chlorine147, Ru106, Sm151, P32, Tm170". Fellow postgraduate student as Chicago at the time included Tsung-Dao Lee, Chen Ning Yang], Owen Chamberlain and Jack Steinberger.

Agnew went back to Los Alamos and worked in weapons development, ultimately becoming head of the Weapon Nuclear Engineering Division in 1964, a position he held until becoming Director in 1970. He served as director until 1979. Under Agnew's directorship, Los Alamos developed an underground test containment program, completed its Meson Physics Facility, acquired the first Cray supercomputer, and trained the first class of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors.

Agnew served as a New Mexico State Senator from 1955 to 1961.

From 1961 to 1964, he was Scientific Adviser to the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). He also held a number of part-time advisory position with the military over the years. He was a member of the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board from 1957 to 1968, and was chairman of the Science Advisory Group of the United States Army's Combat Development Command from 1966 to 1970. He was a member of the Defense Science Board from 1966 to 1970, the Army's Scientific Advisory Panel from 1966 to 1974, and the Army Science Board from 1978 to 1984.

Later life

In 1979, Agnew resigned from Los Alamos and became President and Chief Executive Officer of General Atomics, a position he held until 1985. In his letter of resignation to David S. Saxon, the President of the University of California, Agnew wrote that his decision was influenced by "dissatisfaction with University administration policies and a lack of advocacy for the total LASL [Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory] program" and "frustration with what I consider to be a continuing inequitable distribution of defense program funding by the Department of Energy between the LASL and LLL [Lawrence Livermore Laboratory]."

Agnew chaired the General Advisory Committee of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1974 to 1978, and served as a White House science councillor from 1982 to 1989. He wasv a member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel from 1968 to 1974, and from 1978 to 1987. He became an adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego in 1988. He was the recipient of the E.O. Lawrence Award in 1966, and of the Department of Energy's Enrico Fermi Award in 1978. Along with Hans Bethe, Agnew was the first to receive the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

A proponent of tactical nuclear weapons, Agnew pointed out in 1970 that the Thanh Hoa Bridge in Vietnam required hundreds of sorties to destroy with conventional weapons when a nuclear weapon could have done the job with just one. In a 1977 article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Agnew argued that the fusion reactions of neutron bombs could provide "tactical" advantages over conventional fission weapons, especially in countering the "massive armor component possessed by the Eastern bloc." Citing conclusions reached by the Rand Corporation, Agnew argued that without actually affecting the armor of a tank, the neutrons produced by a fusion blast would penetrate the vehicle and "in a matter of a few tens of minutes to hours kill or make the crew completely ineffective." Because the neutron bomb reduced collateral damage, it could be used in a much more selective fashion than a fission weapon, thereby providing a clear "advantage for the military defender as well as for the nearby non-combatant."

Agnew maintained that no new U.S. nuclear weapon design could be certified without nuclear testing, and that stockpile reliability stewardship without such testing may be problematic. In a 1999 letter to the Wall Street Journal, he commented on the significance of allegations of Chinese nuclear espionage. "As long as any nation has a demonstrated nuclear capability and a means of delivering its bombs and warheads, it doesn't really matter whether the warheads are a little smaller or painted a color other than red, white, and blue," he wrote. "I suspect information published in the open by the National [sic.] Resources Defense Council has been as useful to other nations as any computer codes they may have received by illegal means.".

Beverly died on October 11, 2011. Agnew was diagnosed of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and died at his home in Solana Beach, California, on September 29. He was survived by his daughter Nancy and son John. He had arranged to be cremated and his ashes interred with Beverly's at the Guaje Pines Cemetery in Los Alamos.

In a 2005 BBC interview, Agnew stated, "About three-quarters of the U.S. nuclear arsenal was designed under my tutelage at Los Alamos. That is my legacy."

References

• Krauss, Robert; Krauss, Amelia, eds. (2005). The 509th Remembered: A History of the 509th Composite Group as Told by the Veterans Themselves, 509th Anniversary Reunion, Wichita, Kansas October 7–10, 2004. Buchanan, Michigan: 509th Press. ISBN 978-0-923568-66-5. OCLC 59148135. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Palevsky, Mary (10 October 2005). Interview with Harold M. Agnew. University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries. Retrieved 27 December 2011. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Register of the Harold Melvin Agnew motion picture film at the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University