Robert Bacher, 99, A-Bomb Physicist
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Robert Bacher, a physicist who worked at Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project and later became one of the first members of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, died Thursday at Montecito, Calif. He was 99.
Born in Loudonville, Ohio, Bacher earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and his doctorate in 1930. He joined the faculty at Columbia University in 1934 and was named the director of the Laboratory of Nuclear Studies at Cornell University a year later.
He was affiliated with MIT’s Radiation Laboratory and the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb at Los Alamos from 1940 to 1945. Once the bomb-making production phase began, he headed up the bomb physics division. He won the President’s Medal for Merit in 1946.
Bacher also served on the U.S. Science Advisory Committee during the Eisenhower administration.
He joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology in 1949 and remained there for the rest of his career. Bacher helped initiate the creation of the Owens Valley Radio Observatory, which is one of the leading radio astronomy facilities in the world.
He served as president of the American Physical Society in 1964 and president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics from 1969 to 1972.
