1. George Arthur Cowan was an American physical chemist, a businessman and philanthropist.
20 Facts About George Cowan
1. 2.
George Cowan participated in founding the Santa Fe Opera in 1953.
3.
George Cowan founded the Los Alamos National Bank in 1963 to fund housing for Los Alamos employees and served for 30 years as its chair.
4.
George Cowan was the driving influence in founding the Santa Fe Institute together with Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann and others in 1984, based upon his recognition of the need for a place where scientists could be offered a broader curriculum for "a kind of twenty-first century Renaissance man" and associated research.
5.
George Cowan worked there with future Nobel Prize Laureate Eugene Wigner, who would design the first uranium chain reactor.
6.
In 1941, George Cowan participated in taking measurements essential to determining whether the chain reaction in uranium could be achieved.
7.
George Cowan's experience made him one of the experts on the chemistry of radioactive elements in the field of applied nuclear fission.
8.
George Cowan was one of the select group with knowledge of the separate components of the project, kept separate for security reasons.
9.
George Cowan received a draft deferment from the president of the United States for possessing skills uniquely useful to the war effort.
10.
George Cowan participated for some years on the Bethe Panel, whose first chairman was Hans Bethe.
11.
In 1953, George Cowan was a member of the group which founded the Santa Fe Opera.
12.
In 1982, George Cowan accepted a seat on the White House Service Council.
13.
George Cowan believed that our educational culture was enforcing intellectual fragmentation through conservative university programs that depended on specialized grants and funded work.
14.
George Cowan knew that beginning in the 1980s numerical experiments through computer simulations were capable of providing the tools to think about very complex problems in a more holistic fashion.
15.
George Cowan began to imagine a new and independent type of institute that would combine the charter of a university while sharing some of Los Alamos' personnel and computer power.
16.
In 1983, George Cowan assembled a group of senior scientists interested in researching complex, adaptive systems.
17.
George Cowan was enthusiastic about complex systems, which he declared to be the next major thrust in science.
18.
In 1988, George Cowan became a senior fellow emeritus at Los Alamos, part of a group of six longtime Los Alamos employees rewarded with research positions free from administrative chores that would advise the laboratory director on policy issues.
19.
George Cowan served as president of the Santa Fe Institute until his retirement in 1991.
20.
George Cowan died on April 20,2012, from complications of pneumonia in his Los Alamos home.