Harold Agnew
Harold Melvin Agnew is an American physicist, best known for having flown as a scientific observer on the Hiroshima bombing mission and, later, as the third director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Harold Agnew was born in Denver, Colorado on March 28, 1921, died September 29, 2013. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Denver and joined Enrico Fermi\\\'s Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicagoin January 1942. There, he was involved in the construction of Chicago Pile-1, witnessing the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in December 1942. Agnew worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos from 1943 to 1945. On August 6, 1945, Agnew flew as a scientific observer with the 509th Composite Group to Hiroshima in the B-29 aircraft The Great Artiste, piloted by Charles Sweeney, which tailed the Enola Gay. With Luis Alvarez and Larry Johnson, Agnew had devised a method for measuring the yield of the nuclear blast by dropping pressure gauges on parachutes and telemetering the readings back to the plane. Agnew returned to the University of Chicago in 1946, where he completed his graduate work under Fermi. He received his Master of Science (MS) degree in 1948 and his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1949.Agnew went back to Los Alamos and worked in weapons development, ultimately becoming head of the Weapon Nuclear Engineering Division in 1964, a position he held until becoming Director in 1970. He served as director until 1979. Under Agnew\\\'s directorship, Los Alamos developed an underground test containment program, completed its Meson Physics Facility, acquired the first Cray supercomputer, and trained the first class of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. Agnew retired from Los Alamos in 1979 and became president and CEO of General Atomics, a position held until 1985. He chaired the General Advisory Committee of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1974-1978), and served as a White House science councilor (1982-1989). He became in 1988 an adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego.
