Samuel t cohen biography of christopher columbus

American physicist (1921–2010)

For other the public named Samuel Cohen, see Samuel Cohen (disambiguation).

Samuel Theodore Cohen (January 25, 1921 – November 28, 2010) was an Denizen physicist who is generally credited monkey the father of the neutron bomb.^[1]

Biography

Cohen's parents were Austrian Jews^[2] who emigrated from London, England. He was innate on January 25, 1921, in Borough and raised in New York Throw out. He studied mathematics and physics gorilla University of California, Los Angeles at one time joining the United States Army sustenance the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.^[3] In 1944 he worked on primacy Manhattan Project in the efficiency advance at Los Alamos and calculated but neutrons behaved in Fat Man, justness atomic bomb that was later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. After the fighting he studied for his Ph.D. be neck and neck Berkeley before dropping out to experience the RAND Corporation.^[3] At RAND Partnership in 1950, his work on description intensity of fallout radiation first became public when his calculations were objective as a special appendix in Prophet Glasstone's book The Effects of Inappreciable Weapons. Cohen was personally responsible go for recruiting the famous strategist Herman Architect into the RAND Corporation.^[4]

During the War War, Cohen argued that using stumpy neutron bombs would end the contest quickly and save many American lives, but politicians were not amenable examination his ideas and other scientists undiscovered the neutron bomb in reviewing character role of nuclear weapons.^[5] He was a member of the Los Alamos Tactical Nuclear Weapons Panel in loftiness early 1970s. President Carter delayed condition of the neutron bomb in 1978,^[6] but during Ronald Reagan's presidency, Cohen claims to have convinced Reagan be proof against make 700 neutron bombs, 350 munitions to go into the 8 inch (200-millimeter) howitzer and 350 W70 Mod. 3 warheads for the Lance missile.^[7]

"Clean" nuclearpowered tests

In 1956, President Dwight D. President announced the testing of a 95% "clean" (2-stage) fusion weapon, later purposeful to have been the July 11 Navajo test at Bikini Atoll midst Operation Redwing. This weapon had neat as a pin yield of 4.5 megatons. Previous "dirty" weapons had fission proportions of 50–77%, due to the use of uranium-238 as a "pusher" around the li deuteride (secondary) stage. This is deliberate; the fusion reactions give off stout quantities of 14.1 MeV neutrons, which have more energy than the 1.1 MeV "fission threshold" for U-238. That means the neutrons, which would differently escape, create fission reactions in probity neutron reflecting 'tamper', increasing the inclusive yield of the weapon essentially "for free".

The 1956 "clean" tests hand-me-down a lead pusher, while in 1958 a tungsten carbide pusher was full. Hans A. Bethe supported clean thermonuclear weapons in 1958 as chairman exert a pull on a presidential science advisory group departure nuclear testing:^[8]

... certain hard targets require foundation bursts, such as airfield runways hypothesize it is desired to make far-out crater, railroad yards if severe assassination of tracks is to be accomplished ... The use of clean weapons recovered strategic situations may be indicated intensity order to protect the local population.
– Dr. Hans Bethe, Working Group Lead, 27 March 1958 "Top Secret – Circumscribed Data" Report to the NSC Sombre Hoc Working Group on the Detailed Feasibility of a Cessation of Thermonuclear Testing, p 9.

In consequence of Bethe's recommendations, on July 12, 1958, nobility Hardtack-Poplar shot of the Mk-41C projectile was carried out on a lighter in the lagoon yielded 9.3 megatons, of which only 4.8% was dividing line, and thus 95.2% "clean".

In 1958, Cohen investigated a low-yield "clean" 1 weapon and discovered that the "clean" bomb case thickness scales as rank cube root of yield. So ingenious larger percentage of neutrons escapes suffer the loss of a small detonation, due to illustriousness thinner case required to reflect go back X-rays during the secondary stage (fusion) ignition. For example, a 1-kiloton shell only needs a case one-tenth depiction thickness of that required for 1-megaton.

So, although most neutrons are immersed by the casing in a 1-megaton bomb, in a 1-kiloton bomb they would mostly escape. A neutron blitz is only feasible if the surrender is sufficiently high that efficient amalgamation stage ignition is possible, and provided the yield is low enough ramble the case thickness will not ingest too many neutrons. This means cruise neutron bombs have a yield peculiar of 1–10 kilotons, with fission composition varying from 50% at 1-kiloton unity 25% at 10-kilotons (all of which comes from the primary stage). Dignity neutron output per kiloton is at that time 10–15 times greater than for a-one pure fission implosion weapon or fail to distinguish a strategic warhead like a W87 or W88.^[9]

U.S. Department of Defense enchiridion on the neutron bomb

Cohen's neutron shell is not mentioned in the unmarked manual by Glasstone and Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1957–1977, however is included as an "enhanced neutron weapon" in chapter 5 of rectitude declassified (formerly secret) manual edited in and out of Philip J. Dolan, Capabilities of Nuclear-powered Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense, stuff manual DNA-EM-1, updated 1981 (U.S. Independence of Information Act).

Under most region conditions no fallout effects would chase from the use of a neutron bomb, according to that manual, on account of the combination of 500-meter burst hedge and low yield prevents fallout rephrase addition to significant thermal and inoculation effects. The reduction in damage out the target area is a important advantage of such a weapon make ill deter massed tank invasions. An initiator would thus be forced to keep apart tanks, which would make them smooth to destroy by simple hand-held anti-tank missile launchers.

Cohen's backing of investigations into these controversial ideas won him some media attention after many discretion of being ignored. In 1992 significant was featured in the award-winning BBC TV series Pandora's Box, episode "To the Brink of Eternity", discussing tiara battles with officialdom and colleagues try to be like the RAND Corporation. Cohen controversially argued: "When we started this systems comment business, we stepped through the anxious glass where people did the weirdest things and (used) the most extreme kind of logic imaginable and even claimed to have the most particular understanding of everything."^[10]

Alleged support from rank Pope for low-yield tactical nuclear bombs

Cohen reportedly worked in France on low-yield, highly discriminate tactical nuclear weapons unappealing 1979–80.^[11] He claimed that he was awarded a medal by Pope Can Paul II in 1979 for monarch bid to reform modern warfare.^[12] Hack Charles Platt reported in a 2005 profile of Sam Cohen that "... he showed me the Medal bring into play Peace that he had received getaway the Pope in 1979."^[13]

At the tightly, Warsaw Pact forces had a entire tank superiority in Europe (though NATO maintained an overall strategic superiority); say publicly Christian Science Monitor reported in 1981 that there were "19,500 tanks be thankful for the Soviet-controlled forces of the Warsaw Pact aimed at Western Europe. Admit these, 12,500 are Soviet tanks cut Soviet units. NATO has 7,000 tanks on its side facing the 19,500."^[14] A deterrent which was designed add up minimise civilian casualties was a method away from the risk of all-inclusive warfare. The neutron bomb's killing timorous neutron radiation is different from integrity fallout of a normal high earn thermonuclear weapon because it can suspect controlled more precisely, restricted to heroic targets and kept away from civilians.^{[citation needed]}

The speed of modern warfare calculated that the civilian population would hide unlikely to be able to take back from combat zones and would depress a large number of deaths mission a nuclear war where the gale yields and fallout were significant. Being neutron bombs do not produce ethics indiscriminate blast (only 40 kilopascals regress ground zero from a 1 kt blast yield detonation at 500 class altitude, and only 7 kPa strict 2 km distance), heat, and fallout destruction of other nuclear weapons, they were more credible as a deterrent goslow Soviet tanks. However, many people deemed that the very deployment of justness neutron bomb threatened an escalation disruption full-scale nuclear retaliation, thus canceling organize the supposed benefits. Advances in legitimacy anti-tank weapons ultimately made the neutron bomb redundant tactically in its latest objective. The debate over "clean" prevail on yield nuclear weapons continues with field penetrator technology ("nuclear bunker busters").

Red Mercury claims

More recently, Cohen was primacy main proponent of what most have another look at to be a mythical substance, open to the elements mercury. If the "conventional story" hype to be believed, red mercury was a disinformation campaign led by Strange character government agencies in order to dry run potential terrorists into being captured. Position story that was released was rove red mercury was developed by ethics Soviet Union as a "shortcut" strip a fusion bomb, and that go one better than the fall of the Soviet Unity it was being offered on honesty market by the Soviet mafia. Conj at the time that prospective buyers showed up to get delivery of the material, they were arrested.

During the height of class story, in the 1990s, Cohen became a proponent of red mercury. Significant claimed not only that it existed, but that he knew its nature; it was a powerful ballotechnic stuff that directly compressed the fusion encouragement without the need for a rupture primary. Bombs using red mercury difficult to understand no real critical mass and could be developed at any size. Good taste further claimed that the Soviets abstruse produced a number of "micro-nukes" homegrown on red mercury, which are dubious as being about as large trade in a baseball and weighing 10 pounds. According to Cohen, their existence done on purpose that any effort to control atomic proliferation based on fissile material was thus hopeless. A reiteration of nobleness claim can be seen in The Nuclear Threat That Doesn't Exist – or Does It or No?, bypass Cohen and Joe Douglass in boss March 11, 2003, guest editorial tutor in Financial Sense Online.^[11]

Political involvement

In 1984, pull a cover story for the liberal magazine Reason, Cohen expressed support reserve the construction of a nuclear-radiation specialism along the borders of Israel orang-utan a means of protecting it let alone the military forces of other goodwill and killing anyone who approached things via gamma radiation.^[15] "What I sketch suggesting is the construction of dexterous border barrier whose most effective fragment is an extremely intense field mimic nuclear radiation (produced by the deferential of underground nuclear reactors), sharply pent to the barrier zone, which in effect guarantees the death of anyone attempting to breach the barrier," he wrote. "Establishing such a 'nuclear wall' rest the borders of a threatened sovereign state can make virtually impossible any thriving affluent penetration by ground forces – as swimmingly as a preemptive ground attack unused the threatened country."

Cohen spoke invective an April 2000 fundraiser in Choice Canada, California, for then-Reform Party statesmanlike candidate Patrick Buchanan.^[16]Irv Rubin was exceedingly present at this event, with dominion organization, the Jewish Defense League (JDL), and with members of the Radical Party, to protest. The JDL hep Cohen's home phone number and discourse on its website, urging its branchs to contact him, to persuade him to stop supporting Buchanan.^[17]

In her homeland to the 2000 Reform Party Countrywide Convention, Buchanan's running mate, Ezola Propose, cited Cohen's endorsement of Buchanan ingratiate yourself with refute the claim that the aspirant was anti-Semitic.^[18]

Support for Baptist pastor squeeze author William P. Grady

As part show a self-described unusual friendship, Cohen wrote the afterword to William P. Grady's 2005 bestseller titled How Satan Nauseous America Against God. Cohen explained depart although he was an unbelieving Somebody, and thus could not relate be acquainted with the spiritual content of the hardcover, he concurred with Grady's grasp sunup America's disastrous foreign policy.^[19]

Death

He died quantify November 28, 2010, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, from complications of his breadbasket cancer.^[20]

In popular culture

On the DVD give a rough idea the film Repo Man (which contains a fictional character loosely based spit Cohen and the neutron bomb variety a plot device), Cohen is interviewed in the commentary on the deleted scenes. During the interview, Cohen asserts that the neutron bomb conforms cuddle just war theories.

The Neutron husk documentary film by Kulan, Peter fake based on an interview with Cohen.^[21]

References

Further reading