James L. Tuck

James Tuck's ID badge photo from Los Alamos.

James Leslie Tuck OBE, (January 9, 1910 – December 15, 1980) was a British physicist. He was born in Manchester, England, and educated at the Victoria University of Manchester. Because of his involvement with the Manhattan Project, he was unable to submit his thesis on time and never received his doctoral degree.

In 1937 he was offered an appointment as a Salter Research Fellow at Oxford University, where he worked with Leo Szilard on particle accelerators.

At the outbreak of World War II, he was appointed as the scientific advisor to Frederick Alexander Lindemann, who was on the private staff of Winston Churchill. His research included work on shaped charges, used in anti-tank weapons. For this work he received the Order of the British Empire from King George VI.

His expertise on shaped charges led to his being sent to Los Alamos, where he served as the director of the British delegation to the Manhattan Project, and helped in the development of explosive lensing. This work was crucial to the success of the plutonium atomic bomb.

After the war, he returned briefly to England, but found the postwar conditions there difficult and in 1949 returned to the United States, assuming a position at the University of Chicago. A year later, he returned to Los Alamos, where he remained until his retirement in 1973.

At Los Alamos he worked on thermonuclear weapons. He was appointed director of Project Sherwood and in that capacity worked on controlled nuclear fusion.

After his retirement he became a prominent public supporter of research into thermonuclear fusion for power generation. He also became quite interested in the phenomenon of ball lightning, probably because of the connection between plasmas and their role in fusion power schemes.

Honors and Service

• Order of the British Empire, 1944 or 1945
• Fellow of the American Physical Society
• Editor, Review of Plasma Physics and Controlled Thermonuclear Research

References

• "James Leslie Tuck (obituary)," Physics Today, March 1981, pp. 87-88.
• Dennis C. Fakley, "The British Mission," Los Alamos Science, Winter/Spring 1983, pp. 186-189.
• Ferenc Szasz, "James L. Tuck: Scientific Polymath and Eternal Optimist of the Atomic West," in The Atomic West, edited by Bruce William Hevly and John M. Findlay. Seattle: University of Washington Press (1998), pp. 136-156.
• James L. Tuck, "Curriculum Vita and Autobiography," Declassified document from Los Alamos National Laboratory (1974), reproduced with permission.