Harold Agnew

HISTORICAL SOCIETY News:

Harold Agnew received an A.B. degree in chemistry at the University of Denver in spring of 1942 and left immediately to work at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, known more familiarly at the Met Lab.

There he witnessed the first sustained nuclear chain reaction, Chicago Pile-1. In less than a year, the young scientist was working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in the Experimental Physics Division, and would soon be on Tinian Island, holding Fat Man’s plutonium core.

That was a lot to take in for a young chemist yet to get his Ph.D., but more achievements awaited in his career.

From 1970–1979, Agnew, a Manhattan Project pioneer and Cold War veteran, served as the third director of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, soon to become the Los Alamos National Laboratory. As director, he oversaw development of the majority of systems in today’s nuclear stockpile. Among his other legacies were measures fundamental to the increased security and safety of the stockpile. Agnew also opened the Laboratory to research that diversified programmatic efforts beyond the historic nuclear weapons mission.

John Hopkins, who had a leadership role during the Agnew years, and Denny Erickson, who began his Los Alamos career with Agnew as his first director, will discuss Agnew’s enduring contributions at 7 p.m. March 12 in Fuller Lodge. This presentation and others in the 2018-2019 Anniversary Lecture Series are sponsored by Raffi Andonian and Nicole Kliebert.