Cars stopped at the main guard gate to Los Alamos looking east. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

• TNMSU history professor Jon Hunner speaks May 8

The early social history of Los Alamos during Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Manhattan Project beginnings will be discussed at a talk by Jon Hunner at 5:30 p.m., May 8 at the Laboratory’s Bradbury Science Museum.

The talk is part of the Laboratory’s 70th anniversary lecture series.

Hunner heads the Department of History at New Mexico State University and is responsible for administering the department and teaching U.S., New Mexico and public history courses.

Hunner will talk about the “instant city” that was created when Los Alamos was selected as one of the Manhattan Project sites in the 1940s, how Los Alamos quickly grew to accommodate scientists, researchers and their families, and military personnel, and how these individuals worked at a feverish pace to create the world’s first atomic bomb.

Hunner has received numerous awards for his work, including a Heritage Preservation Award from the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division and a Best Anthology Award from New Mexico Book Awards for his book about former New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici.

He is author of several publications, including “Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Cold War and the Atomic West,” “Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community,” “The Early Years of Robert Oppenheimer,” a chapter in “Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project,” and “Rosie the Riveter, J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American West Transformed,” a chapter in “Western Lives: A Biographical History of the American West.”

Hunner has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, and master’s and doctoral degrees in history from the University of New Mexico.

About the 70th anniversary lecture series

Los Alamos National Laboratory celebrates 70 years of service to the nation in 2013. This free lecture series is part of a number of activities planed to mark the anniversary.

All events at the Bradbury Science Museum are free and open to the public. Bradbury Science Museum is located at 1350 Central Ave., in downtown Los Alamos. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m., Sunday and Monday.