GEORGE KISTIAKOWSKY

'George Bogdan Kistiakowsky' (November 18, 1900 – December 7, 1982) was a chemistry professor at Harvard who participated in the Manhattan Project. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, he attended private schools in Kyiv and Moscow until the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917. He was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks but later escaped to Germany, where he received his P.H.D in 1925. He joined the Manhattan Project in 1944, replacing Seth Neddermeyer as head of the implosion department. Under his leadership came the complex explosive lenses needed to compress the plutonium sphere uniformly to achieve critical mass. He was a professor of physical chemistry at Harvard for the rest of his career, and served on the President's Science Advisory committee for several years, becoming the science advisor to President Eisenhower in 1959. In later years he was active in an antiwar organization, the Council for a Livable World.

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External links

★ Annotated bibliography for George Kistiakowsky from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

★ Online biography from Los Alamos National Laboratory