History: David Hawkins, 88, bomb project worker

["Michael P. Grissom" <mpg1@coastside.net>]

radsafe'ers,



The following item was in the March 4, 2002 issue

of the San Jose Mercury News:





                David Hawkins, 88,

               bomb project worker



                  by Elaine Woo

                Los Angeles Times



David Hawkins, a philosopher who became the official

historian of the experiment that produced the atomic

bomb, died of natural causes Feb. 24 in Boulder, Colo.

He was 88.



Mr. Hawkins was teaching philosophy at the University

of California-Berkeley in 1943 when his friend J.

Robert Oppenheimer invited him to join the Los Alamos

Laboratory in New Mexico. Oppenheimer was director of

the Manhattan Project, the top-secret military

experiment that produced the world's first atomic

explosion.



Mr. Hawkins was Oppenheimer's troubleshooter, whose

duties included inventing reasons to keep the project's

many young physicists from being drafted. As the

program's historian, he came to know the brilliant

Edward Teller and other members of Oppenheimer's team.



But Mr. Hawkins was so disturbed by the prospect of

nuclear warfare that he refused to witness the project's

culminating moment: the test blast that lighted the

sky over a New Mexico mesa in 1945.



"As the historian, I could have demanded a grandstand

seat, but I didn't want to see it," he said several

years ago.



Born in El Paso, Texas, he was raised in La Luz, N.M.

His father was William Ashton Hawkins, a lawyer who

gained prominence for his work on water law.



He studied philosophy at Stanford University, graduating

in 1934. He earned a master's degree from Stanford and

a doctorate from UC-Berkeley. At Berkeley, he met

Oppenheimer, then a physics professor.



Mr. Hawkins joined the UC_Berkeley faculty in 1941,

the year that President Roosevelt secretly established

the Manhattan Project to beat Germany in the race to

build an atomic bomb.



Oppenheimer became director of the Manhattan Project

in 1942, recruiting the best minds in physics for

his new research center in Los Alamos. He phoned Mr.

Hawkins in 1943.



Mr. Hawkins left Los Alamos after finishing his

history of the project.



In 1947 he joined the University of Colorado, where

he taught philosophy and physical sciences and

developed a strong interest in improving science

education. He and his wife, a leader in early

childhood education, founded the Mountain View

Center for Environmental Education, which for many

years provided advanced training for elementary and

preschool teachers.

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