Harold Agnew, who helped design the first atomic bomb as a member of the Manhattan Project, led efforts after World War II to make the weapons more secure and championed the development of nuclear power, has died. He was 92.
Agnew, who also directed the Los Alamos National Laboratory for nearly a decade, died on Sunday while watching football at his home in Solana Beach, his family said. He had chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Agnew helped build the world’s first reactor, flew alongside the Enola Gay when it dropped its load on Hiroshima and headed Los Alamos’ weaponry division during a prolific postwar period when the lab developed many weapons, including the thermonuclear warhead for the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile.
“Harold was an innovator,” said Los Alamos National Laboratory historian Alan Carr. “The vast majority of weapons in the nuclear stockpile were designed at Los Alamos, and Harold had a hand in designing most of them — I’d say about 75 percent.”