At one point, the future of Ashley Pond was uncertain. Some wanted it filled in and others wanted it to be cleaned out and made into a civic asset. Here, Jim Tuck took a raft out onto the pond to measure depth and other water quality aspects. His efforts helped save the pond. Courtesy/LASL Community News

Jim Tuck. Courtesy/Atomic Heritage Foundation

By Heather McClenahan
Los Alamos Historical Society

One of the more colorful characters of the Manhattan Project and subsequent history of the community of Los Alamos is British physicist Jim Tuck, a pipe-smoking, “get ‘er done” kind of guy who made significant scientific contributions not only to the project but to fusion reactors and other laboratory ventures.

Born in Manchester, England, in 1910, Tuck studied physics at the Victoria University of Manchester and was later appointed a research fellow at Oxford University where he worked with Leó Szilárd on particle accelerators.

At the beginning of World War II, Tuck designed anti-tank weapons based on shaped, high-explosive charges. That work led directly to his becoming part of the British Mission to Los Alamos where he served as the principal scientific officer of the mission through 1946. He worked on explosives lenses for the plutonium-based implosion weapons and, in fact, along with Seth Neddermeyer and Jon von Neumann, he was awarded a secret patent for those lenses. They were tested in the “gadget” at Trinity and ultimately used on Nagasaki, Japan, to help bring a swift end to World War II.

Tuck spent time in Great Britain and at the University of Chicago after the war but soon returned to Los Alamos. He served as the Associate Division Leader for the Lab’s physics division from 1956-1973, overseeing Project Sherwood, the codename for the controlled nuclear fusion program.

Project Sherwood reportedly got its playful name based on Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood fame because the Brit, although not a known relation to Friar Tuck, was in charge. (Tuck was also quite thin compared to his chubby literary namesake.) Laboratory officials have sometimes demurred at this story, but it does show up on the project’s Wikipedia page and in Tuck’s own curriculum vitae.

More than a scientist, Tuck contributed significantly to the development of both the laboratory and the community after the war, and he served as a delegate to the United Nations Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva in 1958.

A year later, the future of Ashley Pond came under some doubt. A few people in the community wanted to fill it in. Others wanted it to be cleaned out and made into a civic asset. Tuck took a raft out onto the pond to measure depth and other water quality aspects. The expedition resulted in a rather famous photograph of Tuck and his crew, and, in the end, the pond was saved.

Eulilai Quintana Newton, group leader for the lab’s mail and records department, remembered Tuck as particularly distinguished looking and receiving “a lot of mail from big shots” and people in Washington. “He always had his little pipe—that’s what I remember about him,” she said.

Like many of his larger-than-life colleagues, Tuck had a human side as well.

Arno Roensch, a glassblower who was stationed in Los Alamos during the war, said Tuck was the only scientific leader he knew of who kept a couch in his office. “If he wanted to nap, he would close the door, and he had a couch there. He put a sign up that said, ‘In Conference,’ and he was not to be disturbed.”

Los Alamos historian Sharon Snyder recalls playing tennis in the early 1960s on the court next to the Chapel Apartments where she lived. One evening she and a friend watched as Tuck and his friends played a doubles match as they so often did on that court. When they had finished, Tuck handed Snyder and her friend the can of tennis balls they had opened for that match. “We put those to good use for quite a long time,” she recalls. She fondly reminisced, “They had opened the can just for that match, so they were almost new! I’ve never forgotten how nice Dr. Tuck treated a couple of kids he didn’t even know.”

Jim Tuck retired from the laboratory in 1973. He passed away in December 1980, having made a significant contribution to science and to our community.