1. Charles Louis Critchfield was an American mathematical physicist.
15 Facts About Charles Critchfield
1. 2.
In 1943, Teller and Robert Oppenheimer persuaded Critchfield to come to the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he joined the Ordnance Division under Captain William Parsons on the gun-type fission weapons, Little Boy and Thin Man.
3.
Charles Critchfield joined von Neumann and Wigner there on several visits.
4.
In 1942, after a brief stay at Harvard University, Charles Critchfield went to the Carnegie Institution of Washington, where he continued his ballistic studies, which resulted in three patents for improved sabot designs.
5.
Charles Critchfield reassigned Critchfield to a new Gadget Division under Robert Bacher, as the leader of the Initiator group.
6.
Charles Critchfield left Los Alamos in 1946 and returned to George Washington University, but soon left to join Wigner at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
7.
In 1955, after advancing to full professor at Minnesota, Charles Critchfield became vice president for research at the Convair division of General Dynamics.
8.
Charles Critchfield created the Convair Scientific Research Laboratory whose staff were expected to serve as consultants for the company's engineering divisions and to carry out basic scientific research.
9.
In early November 1959, President Dwight D Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense Neil H McElroy selected Critchfield to be head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
10.
McElroy hoped that Charles Critchfield would be able to fix the nation's troubled missile program, but Charles Critchfield was reluctant to serve at the director's $19,000 salary.
11.
McElroy then offered to let Charles Critchfield serve without pay, with the government paying only his expenses of $15 per day, while allowing Charles Critchfield to continue to draw his Convair salary of around $40,000.
12.
Charles Critchfield accepted this offer, but ran into a storm of political and media criticism over the conflict of interest involved in heading an agency that did $4 million worth of business with Convair each year.
13.
In 1961, Critchfield accepted a professorship at the University of Wisconsin, but before he moved to Madison, his friends at Los Alamos, J Carson Mark and Norris Bradbury offered him a position there that he took instead.
14.
Charles Critchfield held this position until he retired in 1977, but he continued his association with the laboratory until his death after a long battle with cancer on February 12,1994.
15.
Charles Critchfield is buried next to his wife, Jean, in Guaje Pines Cemetery in Los Alamos County, New Mexico.