Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists are interested in the root or ultimate causes of phenomena, frame their understanding in mathematical terms. Physicists work across a wide range of research fields, spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic and particle physics, through biological physics, to cosmological length scales encompassing the universe as a whole; the field includes two types of physicists: experimental physicists who specialize in the observation of physical phenomena and the analysis of experiments, theoretical physicists who specialize in mathematical modeling of physical systems to rationalize and predict natural phenomena. Physicists can apply their knowledge towards solving practical problems or to developing new technologies; the study and practice of physics is based on an intellectual ladder of discoveries and insights from ancient times to the present.
Many mathematical and physical ideas used today found their earliest expression in ancient Greek culture, for example in the work of Euclid, Thales of Miletus and Aristarchus. Roots emerged in ancient Asian culture and in the Islamic medieval period, for example the work of Alhazen in the 11th century; the modern scientific worldview and the bulk of physics education can be said to flow from the scientific revolution in Europe, starting with the work of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler in the early 1600s. Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation were formulated in the 17th century; the experimental discoveries of Faraday and the theory of Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism were developmental high points during the 19th century. Many physicists contributed to the development of quantum mechanics in the early-to-mid 20th century. New knowledge in the early 21st century includes a large increase in understanding physical cosmology; the broad and general study of nature, natural philosophy, was divided into several fields in the 19th century, when the concept of "science" received its modern shape.
Specific categories emerged, such as "biology" and "biologist", "physics" and "physicist", "chemistry" and "chemist", among other technical fields and titles. The term physicist was coined by William Whewell in his 1840 book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. A standard undergraduate physics curriculum consists of classical mechanics and magnetism, non-relativistic quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, laboratory experience. Physics students need training in mathematics, in computer science. Any physics-oriented career position requires at least an undergraduate degree in physics or applied physics, while career options widen with a Master's degree like MSc, MPhil, MPhys or MSci. For research-oriented careers, students work toward a doctoral degree specializing in a particular field. Fields of specialization include experimental and theoretical astrophysics, atomic physics, biological physics, chemical physics, condensed matter physics, geophysics, gravitational physics, material science, medical physics, molecular physics, nuclear physics, radiophysics, electromagnetic field and microwave physics, particle physics, plasma physics.
The highest honor awarded to physicists is the Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded since 1901 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. National physics professional societies have many awards for professional recognition. In the case of the American Physical Society, as of 2017, there are 33 separate prizes and 38 separate awards in the field; the three major employers of career physicists are academic institutions and private industries, with the largest employer being the last. Physicists in academia or government labs tend to have titles such as Assistants, Professors, Sr./Jr. Scientist, or postdocs; as per the American Institute of Physics, some 20% of new physics Ph. D.s holds jobs in engineering development programs, while 14% turn to computer software and about 11% are in business/education. A majority of physicists employed apply their skills and training to interdisciplinary sectors. Job titles for graduate physicists include Agricultural Scientist, Air Traffic Controller, Computer Programmer, Electrical Engineer, Environmental Analyst, Medical Physicist, Oceanographer, Physics Teacher/Professor/Researcher, Research Scientist, Reactor Physicist, Engineering Physicist, Satellite Missions Analyst, Science Writer, Software Engineer, Systems Engineer, Microelectronics Engineer, Radar Developer, Technical Consultant, etc.
A majority of Physics terminal bachelor's degree holders are employed in the private sector. Other fields are academia and military service, nonprofit entities and teaching. Typical duties of physicists with master's and doctoral degrees working in their domain involve research and analysis, data preparation, instrumentation and development of industrial or medical equipment and software development, etc. Chartered Physicist is a chartered status and a professional qualification awarded by the Institute of Physics, it is denoted by the postnominals "CPhys". Achieving chartered status in any profession denotes to the wider community a high level of specialised subject knowledge and professional competence. According to the Institute of Physics, holders of the award of the Chartered Physicist demonst
Information Age
The Information Age is a historic period in the 21st century characterized by the rapid shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on information technology. The onset of the Information Age can be associated with William Shockley, Walter Houser Brattain and John Bardeen, the inventors and engineers behind the first transistors, revolutionising modern technologies. With the Digital Revolution, just as the Industrial Revolution marked the onset of the Industrial Age; the definition of what "digital" means continues to change over time as new technologies, user devices, methods of interaction with other humans and devices enter the domain of research and market launch. During the Information Age, digital industry shapes a knowledge-based society surrounded by a high-tech global economy that exerts influence on how the manufacturing and service sectors operate in an efficient and convenient way. In a commercialized society, the information industry can allow individuals to explore their personalized needs, therefore simplifying the procedure of making decisions for transactions and lowering costs both for producers and for buyers.
This is accepted overwhelmingly by participants throughout the entire economic activities for efficacy purposes, new economic incentives would be indigenously encouraged, such as the knowledge economy. The Information Age formed by capitalizing on computer microminiaturization advances; this evolution of technology in daily life and social organization has led to the modernization of information and communication processes becoming the driving force of social evolution. Library expansion was calculated in 1945 by Fremont Rider to double in capacity every 16 years if sufficient space were made available, he advocated replacing bulky, decaying printed works with miniaturized microform analog photographs, which could be duplicated on-demand for library patrons or other institutions. He did not foresee the digital technology that would follow decades to replace analog microform with digital imaging and transmission media. Automated lossless digital technologies allowed vast increases in the rapidity of information growth.
Moore's law, formulated around 1965, calculated that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles every two years. The proliferation of the smaller and less expensive personal computers and improvements in computing power by the early 1980s resulted in sudden access to and the ability to share and store information for increasing numbers of workers. Connectivity between computers within companies led to the ability of workers at different levels to access greater amounts of information; the world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000, to 295 exabytes in 2007. This is the informational equivalent to less than one 730-MB CD-ROM per person in 1986 4 CD-ROM per person of 1993, 12 CD-ROM per person in the year 2000, 61 CD-ROM per person in 2007, it is estimated that the world's capacity to store information has reached 5 zettabytes in 2014. This is the informational equivalent of 4,500 stacks of printed books from the earth to the sun.
The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 432 exabytes of information in 1986, 715 exabytes in 1993, 1.2 zettabytes in 2000, 1.9 zettabytes in 2007. The world's effective capacity to exchange information through two-way telecommunication networks was 281 petabytes of information in 1986, 471 petabytes in 1993, 2.2 exabytes in 2000, 65 exabytes in 2007. In the 1990s, the spread of the Internet caused a sudden leap in access to and ability to share information in businesses and homes globally. Technology was developing so that a computer costing $3000 in 1997 would cost $2000 two years and $1000 the following year; the world's technological capacity to compute information with humanly guided general-purpose computers grew from 3.0 × 108 MIPS in 1986, to 4.4 × 109 MIPS in 1993, 2.9 × 1011 MIPS in 2000 to 6.4 × 1012 MIPS in 2007. An article in the recognized Journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution reports that by now digital technology "has vastly exceeded the cognitive capacity of any single human being and has done so a decade earlier than predicted.
In terms of capacity, there are two measures of importance: the number of operations a system can perform and the amount of information that can be stored. The number of synaptic operations per second in a human brain has been estimated to lie between 10^15 and 10^17. While this number is impressive in 2007 humanity's general-purpose computers were capable of performing well over 10^18 instructions per second. Estimates suggest. On a per capita basis, this is matched by current digital storage". Information and Communication Technology—computers, computerized machinery, fiber optics, communication satellites and other ICT tools—became a significant part of the economy. Microcomputers were developed and many businesses and industries were changed by ICT. Nicholas Negroponte captured the essence of these changes in his 1995 book, Being Digital
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT published under its own name a lecture series entitled Problems of Atomic Dynamics given by the visiting German physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Max Born. Six years MIT's publishing operations were first formally instituted by the creation of an imprint called Technology Press in 1932; this imprint was founded by James R. Killian, Jr. at the time editor of MIT's alumni magazine and to become MIT president. Technology Press published eight titles independently in 1937 entered into an arrangement with John Wiley & Sons in which Wiley took over marketing and editorial responsibilities. In 1962 the association with Wiley came to an end; the press acquired its modern name after this separation, has since functioned as an independent publishing house. A European marketing office was opened in 1969, a Journals division was added in 1972.
In the late 1970s, responding to changing economic conditions, the publisher narrowed the focus of their catalog to a few key areas architecture, computer science and artificial intelligence and cognitive science. In January 2010 the MIT Press published its 9000th title, in 2012 the Press celebrated its 50th anniversary, including publishing a commemorative booklet on paper and online; the press co-founded the distributor TriLiteral LLC with Yale University Press and Harvard University Press. TriLiteral was acquired by LSC Communications in 2018. MIT Press publishes academic titles in the fields of Art and Architecture; the MIT Press is a distributor for such publishers as Zone Books and Semiotext. In 2000, the MIT Press created CogNet, an online resource for the study of the brain and the cognitive sciences; the MIT Press co-owns the distributor TriLiteral LLC with Harvard University Press and Yale University Press. In 1981 the MIT Press published its first book under the Bradford Books imprint, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology by Daniel C.
Dennett. In 2018, the Press and the MIT Media Lab launched the Knowledge Futures Group to develop and deploy open access publishing technology and platforms; the MIT Press operates the MIT Press Bookstore showcasing both its front and backlist titles, along with a large selection of complementary works from other academic and trade publishers. The retail storefront was located next to a subway entrance to Kendall/MIT station in the heart of Kendall Square, but has been temporarily moved to 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a short distance north of the MIT Museum near Central Square. Once extensive construction around its former location is completed, the Bookstore is planned to be returned to a site adjacent to the subway entrance; the Bookstore offers customized selections from the MIT Press at many conferences and symposia in the Boston area, sponsors occasional lectures and book signings at MIT. The Bookstore is known for its periodic "Warehouse Sales" offering deep discounts on surplus and returned books and journals from its own catalog, as well as remaindered books from other publishers.
The Press uses a colophon or logo designed by its longtime design director, Muriel Cooper, in 1962. The design is based on a highly-abstracted version of the lower-case letters "mitp", with the ascender of the "t" at the fifth stripe and the descender of the "p" at the sixth stripe the only differentiation, it served as an important reference point for the 2015 redesign of the MIT Media Lab logo by Pentagram. The Arts and Humanities Economics International Affairs and Political Science Science and Technology The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch', 1960 Experiencing Architecture by Steen Eiler Rasmussen', 1962 Beyond The Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews and Irish of New York City by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan', 1963 The Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman', 1967 Bauhaus: Weimar, Berlin, Chicago by Hans M. Wingler', 1969 The Subjection Of Women, by John Stuart Mill', 1970 Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe', 1970 Learning From Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour', 1972 The Theory of Industrial Organization by Jean Tirole', 1988 Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge by Michael L. Dertouzos, Robert M. Solow and Richard K.
Lester', 1989 Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson and Ronald L. Rivest', 1990 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan', 1994 The Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord', 1994 Financial Modeling by Simon Benninga', 1997 Out of the Crisis, by W. Edwards Deming', 2000 The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics by William R. Easterly', 2001 The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich', 2001 The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda', 2006 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick', 2007 Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville', 2016 Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein, 2018 Official Website MIT Press Journals Homepage The MIT PressLog
MacArthur Fellows Program
The MacArthur Fellows Program, MacArthur Fellowship but unofficially known as a "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to between 20 and 30 individuals, working in any field, who have shown "extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction" and are citizens or residents of the United States. According to the Foundation's website, "the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person's originality and potential"; the current prize is $625,000 paid over five years in quarterly installments. This figure was increased from $500,000 in 2013 with the release of a review of the MacArthur Fellows Program. Since 1981, 942 people have been named MacArthur Fellows, ranging in age from 18 to 82; the award has been called "one of the most significant awards, truly'no strings attached'". The program allows no applications. Anonymous and confidential nominations are invited by the Foundation and reviewed by an anonymous and confidential selection committee of about a dozen people.
The committee reviews all nominees and recommends recipients to the president and board of directors. Most new Fellows first learn of their nomination and award upon receiving a congratulatory phone call. MacArthur Fellow Jim Collins described this experience in an editorial column of The New York Times. Cecilia Conrad is the managing director leading the MacArthur Fellows Program. In the 2008 Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche, New York, The main character Caden Cotard was a recipient of the Grant, used it to fund his immersive play. Guggenheim Fellowship Thomas J. Watson Fellowship MacArthur Fellows Program website
Syosset High School
Syosset High School, located in Syosset, New York, United States, in Nassau County on Long Island, is the only public high school for residents of the Syosset Central School District. As of 2012, the news magazine Newsweek ranked the high school 42nd best in the US. Syosset High School has been ranked #10 in New York by niche.com as of 2016. As of the 2016-17 school year, the school had an enrollment of 2,099 students and 205.36 classroom teachers, for a student–teacher ratio of 10.22:1. There were 11 eligible for reduced-cost lunch; the school was named a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence in 1992–1993. The school district as a whole was the 2002 winner of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network and National School Boards Association Award, which honors school districts for excellence in arts education. Syosset was named a Grammy Signature school for its music programs in orchestra and chorus. In 2010 it was rated 14th in the country for music education by the National Association for Music Education.
Syosset High School ranked. Eleanor Roosevelt was among the first notable people to make a personal appearance in the auditorium. In April 2007, the school's Quiz Bowl team won an online national championship; the Castle Program is designed for students. These students have a history of poor class and school attendance, they meet in a separate setting with small class sizes and a close-knit team of teachers who focus on "realistic expectations." Participation in this program is voluntary. WKWZ, 88.5 FM, is a broadcasting station owned and operated by the Syosset Central School District that operates from 2:30–11:00 pm Monday through Friday. It is licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. WPOB broadcasts on the same frequency from 7:00–2:30 from Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School, is the sister station to WKWZ; the General Manager is head of the Syosset Film and Radio department, David Favilla, with all other positions operated by students in the school, with positions such as Station Managers, Music Director, Sports Director, Traffic Director, Program Director, Community News Director, Organizational Supervisors.
The football team won the 1974 New York State Championship and the Long Island Championship in 2014. The girls' soccer team won the Nassau County Championships in 2018; the boys' swim team won the Nassau County Championships in 2003. The tennis team won the Nassau County Championships in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, they won the Long Island Championship in 2017 and 2018. They had 3 consecutive undefeated regular seasons from 2015-2017; the Syosset Boys Varsity tennis team has been the top, most competitive, high school tennis team in Long Island since 2015. The boys' lacrosse team won the Long Island Championship in 2008 and 2015; the girls' lacrosse team won the Nassau County Championships in 2015. The boys' cross country team won ten back-to-back Nassau County titles from 1996 to 2006; the cross country and track and field teams have won eleven back-to-back county titles from 2012 to 2016. On February 5, 2005, athletes Chris Howell, Adam Lampert, Dan Tully and Sean Tully set the national indoor record in the 4 × 800 metres relay in a time of 7:42.22.
The same team won national championships at the National Scholastic Indoor Championships and Nike Outdoor Nationals and won the 4 × 800 metres relay at the prestigious Penn Relays on April 29, 2005. The boys' soccer team won the Nassau County Championship in 2012; the boys ice hockey team won the Nassau County Championship in 2015. Judd Apatow – screenwriter and producer Lesley Arfin – television writer and author, Love, Brooklyn 99 Jay Bienstock – Emmy award-winning television producer of Survivor, The Apprentice, The Voice Sue Bird – Israeli-American Women's National Basketball Association point guard, three-time Olympic champion, ten-time All-Star Alan S. Blinder – economist and former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Rosa Brooks - writer, law professor, former Department of Defense staff member Elaine Chao - Current Secretary of Transportation, first Asian American woman to be appointed a cabinet member, wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell George Drakoulias - music producer, music supervisor Ben Ehrenreich - journalist and novelist Alan Eichler – theatrical publicist and talent manager Sibel Galindez – actress Paul Ginsparg – physicist Jerry Gershenhorn – historian Brooke Gladstone – journalist and media analyst Wayne Gladstone – writer and humorist Rick Hodes – medical doctor known for work in the developing world Brenda Howard – political activist Michael Isikoff – Newsweek journalist Josh Lafazan - legislator, youngest elected official in New York State Mitchell Lazar – physician-scientist Kenneth Lin – playwright Jon Lovett – former Presidential speechwriter for Barack Obama and current podcast host Carolyne Mas – singer-songwriter Robert Maschio – actor, Scrubs Idina Menzel – actress and singer David Nesenoff – rabbi, journalist Ed Newman, National Football League All-Pro football player Jeff Panzer – music video executive Adam Pascal – actor and singer Michael Pollan – writer Tracy Pollan – actress Natalie Portman – American-Israeli actress Liz Rosenberg – poet, children's book author Gabe Rotter – novelist, television writer and producer Jim Rowinski – NBA player
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the prestigious Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, organizes more than twenty science meetings each year. APS is a member society of the American Institute of Physics; the American Physical Society was founded on May 20, 1899, when thirty-six physicists gathered at Columbia University for that purpose. They proclaimed the mission of the new Society to be "to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics", in one way or another the APS has been at that task since. In the early years the sole activity of the APS was to hold scientific meetings four per year. In 1913, the APS took over the operation of the Physical Review, founded in 1893 at Cornell University, journal publication became its second major activity; the Physical Review was followed by Reviews of Modern Physics in 1929 and by Physical Review Letters in 1958. Over the years, Phys.
Rev. has subdivided into five separate sections as the fields of physics proliferated and the number of submissions grew. In more recent years, the activities of the Society have broadened considerably. Stimulated by the increase in Federal funding in the period after the Second World War, more by the increased public involvement of scientists in the 1960s, the APS is active in public and governmental affairs, in the international physics community. In addition, the Society conducts extensive programs in education, science outreach, media relations. APS has 11 topical groups covering all areas of physics research. There are 6 forums that reflect the interest of its 50,000 members in broader issues, 9 sections organized by geographical region. In 1999, APS Physics celebrated its centennial with the biggest-ever physics meeting in Atlanta. In 2005, APS took the lead role in United States participation in the World Year of Physics, initiating several programs to broadly publicize physics during the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis.
Einstein@Home, one of the projects APS initiated during World Year of Physics, is an ongoing and popular distributed computing project. During the summer of 2005, the society conducted an electronic poll, in which the majority of APS members preferred the name American Physics Society; the poll became the motivation for a proposal of a name change promised in the leadership election that year. However, because of legal issues, the planned name change was abandoned by the APS Executive Board. To promote public recognition of APS as a physics society, while retaining the name American Physical Society, the APS Executive Board adopted a new logo incorporating the phrase "APS Physics." General use of APS Physics to refer to APS or the American Physical Society is encouraged. The new APS Physics logo was designed by Kerry G. Johnson. Marvin Cohen, APS President, said, "I like the logo. At least now when you are in an elevator at an APS meeting and someone looks at your badge, they won't ask you about sports."
The American Physical Society publishes 13 international research journals and an open-access on-line news and commentary website Physics. Physical Review Letters Reviews of Modern Physics Physical Review A: Atomic and optical physics. Physical Review B: Condensed matter and materials physics. Physical Review C: Nuclear physics. Physical Review D: Particles, fields and cosmology. Physical Review E: Statistical and soft matter physics. Physical Review X: Open access. Physical Review Applied: Experimental and theoretical applications of physics. Physical Review Fluids: Fluid dynamics. Physical Review Accelerators and Beams: Open access. Physical Review Physics Education Research: Open access. Physical Review Materials: A broad-scope international journal for the multidisciplinary community engaged in research on materials. All members of APS receive the monthly publication Physics Today, published by the American Institute of Physics; the Society publishes Inside Science, part of a news service launched in 1999 to place more science stories in the media.
Aimed at both introducing the public to new scientific research and at correcting public misconceptions about science, the publication has editorial independence from APS itself. The American Physical Society has 47 units that represent the wide range of interests of the physics community. Astrophysics Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics: The objective of the division is the promotion of the fundamental research on atoms, simple molecules and light, their interactions; this is the oldest division of the American Physical Society. It was created in 1943; the division manages a number of prestigious awards for AMO scientists at various stages of their careers, such as the Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics, Rabi Prize in AMO Physics, Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in AMO Physics, Herbert P. Broida Prize, etc, it organizes annual DAMOP Meetings attended by many leading AMO researchers, both from the United States and abroad. Biological Physics: With over 2,000 members, the division is the second largest learned society in the world devoted to biological physics, following the Biophysical Society.
The objective of the division is the advancement and dissemination of knowledge on the broad interface of physics and biology. This includes st
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory organized during World War II for the design of nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project. It is located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico in the southwestern United States. Los Alamos was selected as the top secret location for bomb design in late 1942, commissioned the next year. At the time it was known as Project Y, one of a series of laboratories located across the United States given letter names to maintain their secrecy. Los Alamos was the center for design and overall coordination, while the other labs, today known as Oak Ridge and Hanford, concentrated on the production of uranium and plutonium bomb fuels. Los Alamos was the heart of the project, collecting together some of the world's most famous scientists, among them numerous Nobel Prize winners; the site was known variously as Project Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory through this period. The lab's existence was announced to the world in the post-WWII era, when it became known universally as Los Alamos.
In 1952, the Department of Energy formed a second design lab under the direction of the University of California, becoming the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Since that date the two labs have competed on a wide variety of bomb designs. With the ending of the Cold War, both labs turned their focus to civilian missions. Today, Los Alamos is one of the largest technology institutions in the world, it conducts multidisciplinary research in fields such as national security, space exploration, nuclear fusion, renewable energy, medicine and supercomputing. The town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, directly north of the lab, grew extensively through this period. After several reorganizations, the LANL is managed and operated by Triad National Security, LLC; the laboratory was founded during World War II as a secret, centralized facility to coordinate the scientific research of the Manhattan Project, the Allied project to develop the first nuclear weapons. In September 1942, the difficulties encountered in conducting preliminary studies on nuclear weapons at universities scattered across the country indicated the need for a laboratory dedicated to that purpose.
General Leslie Groves wanted a central laboratory at an isolated location for safety, to keep the scientists away from the populace. It should be west of the Mississippi. Major John Dudley suggested Oak City, Utah or Jemez Springs, New Mexico but both were rejected. Jemez Springs was only a short distance from the current site. Manhattan Project scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer had spent much time in his youth in the New Mexico area, suggested the Los Alamos Ranch School on the mesa. Dudley had rejected the school as not meeting Groves’ criteria, but as soon as Groves saw it he said in effect "This is the place". Oppenheimer became the laboratory's first director. During the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos hosted thousands of employees, including many Nobel Prize-winning scientists; the location was a total secret. Its only mailing address was number 1663, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Two other post office boxes were used, 180 and 1539 in Santa Fe. Though its contract with the University of California was intended to be temporary, the relationship was maintained long after the war.
Until the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, University of California president Robert Sproul did not know what the purpose of the laboratory was and thought it might be producing a "death ray". The only member of the UC administration who knew its true purpose—indeed, the only one who knew its exact physical location—was the Secretary-Treasurer Robert Underhill, in charge of wartime contracts and liabilities; the work of the laboratory culminated in the creation of several atomic devices, one of, used in the first nuclear test near Alamogordo, New Mexico, codenamed "Trinity", on July 16, 1945. The other two were weapons, "Little Boy" and "Fat Man", which were used in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Laboratory received the Army-Navy ‘E’ Award for Excellence in production on October 16, 1945. After the war, Oppenheimer retired from the directorship, it was taken over by Norris Bradbury, whose initial mission was to make the hand-assembled atomic bombs "G. I. proof" so that they could be mass-produced and used without the assistance of trained scientists.
Many of the original Los Alamos "luminaries" chose to leave the laboratory, some became outspoken opponents to the further development of nuclear weapons. The name changed to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory on January 1, 1947. By this time, Argonne had been made the first National Laboratory the previous year. Los Alamos would not become a National Laboratory in name until 1981. In the years since the 1940s, Los Alamos was responsible for the development of the hydrogen bomb, many other variants of nuclear weapons. In 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was founded to act as Los Alamos' "competitor", with the hope that two laboratories for the design of nuclear weapons would spur innovation. Los Alamos and Livermore served as the primary classified laboratories in the U. S. national laboratory system, designing all the country's nuclear arsenal. Additional work included basic scientific research, particle accelerator development, health physics, fusion power research as part of Project Sherwood.
Many nuclear tests were undertaken at the Nevada Test Site. During the late-1950s, a number of scientists including Dr. J. Robert "Bob" B
