LANL Historian Alan B. Carr stands near one of the Trinity Site bunkers positioned nearly two miles from ground zero where the first nuclear bomb test happened in the Jornada del Muerto desert, 35 miles southeast of Socorro. Carr Lectures On Secret Los Alamos At Smith Auditorium April 4. Courtesy/LANL
JROMC News:
Alan B. Carr, Program Manager and Senior Historian for Los Alamos National Laboratory, will give an illustrated talk on “Manhattan: The View from Los Alamos of History’s Most Secret Project” at 7 p.m. Monday, April 4 at the Duane Smith Auditorium.
Sponsored by the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee (JROMC) and the Los Alamos Historical Society, Carr’s talk is part of the celebration of 50 years of the JROMC’s tribute to Oppenheimer’s influence on the city he founded.
Carr will focus on Oppenheimer’s leadership of a technical staff of 1700 employees who designed, built, tested, and helped to deliver the world’s first nuclear weapons in only 27 months. Carr notes that “Atomic bombs helped bring history’s deadliest conflict to a victorious conclusion, but not before 60-80 million people had been killed worldwide.”
Since 2003, Carr has researched the Manhattan Project, the Laboratory’s Cold War history, and nuclear weapons testing. He has lectured for professional organizations and has been a featured guest on many local, national, and international radio and television programs.
Carr’s talk is free and open to the public.
The public also is invited to visit “A Legacy of Learning: The J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee 50th Anniversary Exhibit” that is now showing at the Step Up Gallery at Mesa Public Library. This multi-faceted show includes photos of many JROMC lectures and scholarship winners, two life-size replicas of “Oppie” for selfies, unusual photos of him as a child, photos from his wife Kitty’s albums donated to the JROMC, “Do You Know” quizzes for fun and enlightenment. Most relevant for today is the momentum for restoring Oppenheimer’s lost security clearance, which was unjustly stripped from him in 1954. Now 25 senators are backing the petition to reverse this decision.
For more information about the JROMC, this lecture by Alan Carr, and the next lecture by James Kunetka on April 14 at the Duane Smith Auditorium, visit www.JROMC.org.
