Dr. Hans Bethe, Dead at 98

Hans Bethe, Father of Nuclear Astrophysics, Dies at 98 -- 5 page article, interesting historical anecdotes

[Excerpt from an article by William J. Broad in today's New York Times www.nytimes.com (registration required, no fee)]

Dr. Hans Bethe was the last of the scientific greats who initiated the nuclear era, outliving not only [Edward]Teller but Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific head of wartime Los Alamos. "He was one of Oppenheimer's first recruits," noted Robert S. Norris, author of "Racing for The Bomb" (Steerforth Press, 2002), "and was among the last survivors of that extraordinary story."

 

In 1943, he was named the first director of the theoretical division at Los Alamos, the secret laboratory in the mountains of New Mexico where thousands of scientists, technicians and military personnel were gathering to see if a nuclear bomb was indeed possible. Dr. Bethe's group calculated such things as how much plutonium it would take to build an atom bomb, and whether the detonation would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the earth...