A Nuclear Field Pioneer Dies

[mikeg@SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Michael P. Grissom)]

The following appeared in the July 6, 1995 San Jose Mercury
News (from a New York Times byline):

  George Leon Weil, a physicist who assisted in the birth
  of the atomic age, died Saturday in Washington.  He was
  87.  ...

  Weil was a trusted lieutenant of Enrico Fermi, who
  directed the first controlled nuclear chain reaction
  on December 2, 1942.  He had joined Fermi's working
  team of scientists at Columbia University in 1940.

  Weil was the young scientist whom Fermi ordered to pull
  out the final control rod, foot by foot, thus activating
  the atomic furnace and causing the neutron counters to
  click ever faster and louder. ...

  After leaving the government service, Weil was the
  technical director of the U.S. delegation to the
  1955 U.N. conference on the peaceful use of atomic
  power in Geneva.

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Michael P. Grissom
mikeg@slac.stanford.edu
Phone:  (415) 926-2346
Fax:    (415) 926-3030