Mark Mills, American Nuclear Physicist

Mills drawing diagrams on a blackboard during testimony before the Congressional Joint Atomic Energy Committee hearings on atomic radioactive fallout. May 27, 1957. Mark Muir Mills (August 8, 1917 -April 7, 1958) was an American nuclear physicist and a developer of atomic bombs. During World War II, he served as a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, heading up the solid propellant section. He was also a physics instructor and lectured for the aeronautics department at Caltech. In 1951 he became technical director at Project SQUID at Princeton University, where basic research was performed in aircraft propulsion. In 1954 he joined the radiation laboratory at the University of California, becoming head of the theoretical division. By 1955 he was a part-time lecturer at the university, on the subject of nuclear reactor theory. He would become a professor of Nuclear Engineering at the university in 1957. In 1958 he took a leave of absence to become deputy director of the Livermore radiation laboratory at the University of California. It was during this period that he was killed during an unfortunate accident at the Eniwetok Proving Ground, located in the Marshall Islands. He was flying in a helicopter that was forced down as a result of torrential rain. This accident occurred during the preparations for a series of atomic bomb tests

Restrictions Only for Ireland and United Kingdom

Atomic Blackboard Congressional Fallout Instructor Joint Lecturer Muir Radioactive Reactor Theory

Features In These Collections

> Contributors > PHR