Joyce C. Stearns

Joyce Clennam Stearns (1893-1948) was an American physicist and an administrator on the Manhattan Project. He served as the Director of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago from Nov. 1944 through July 1945),[1] and as a member of the Target Committee which selected the Japanese cities onto which the first atomic bombs were dropped in World War II.[2] Although Stearns was responsible for generating a list of target cities as a member of that committee, he was also among the prominent physicists who signed the Franck Report in June 1945, urging that the atomic bombs not be dropped in a populated area. Stearns also recruited numerous other scientists into the Manhattan Project, including his former student Harold Agnew, who went on to become the Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Stearns grew up in the vicinity of Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and he earned his bachelor's degree at the now defunct Kingfisher College. He went on to earn his master's and doctoral degrees in physics at the University of Chicago under Nobel Laureate Arthur Compton.[3] Stearns became a professor and later chairman of the department of physics at the University of Denver. His research there included investigation of cosmic rays at a high altitude laboratory atop Mount Evans. In the course of establishing his laboratory there, Stearns worked with Denver City Parks to have a road to the summit built.[3] (The scenic byway is now the highest paved road in the United States.[4]) After World War II, Stearns became the Dean of Faculties at Washington University in St. Louis for a few years before he died of cancer in 1948.[3]

References

  1. ↑ "The Manhattan Project and predecessor organizations". Array of Contemporary American Physicists. Retrieved 7 April 2016.
  2. ↑ Dannen, Gene. "Minutes of the second meeting of the Target Committee Los Alamos, May 10-11, 1945". Dannen.com. Retrieved 7 April 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 Compton, Arthur (August 1948). "In Memoriam: Joyce Clennam Stearns". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 4 (8): 235. Retrieved 7 April 2016.
  4. ↑ Snyder, Karl. "Mount Evans Scenic Byway and Wilderness". Retrieved 7 April 2016.
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