Louis Rosen, R.I.P.

Earlier this month, nuclear scientist Louis Rosen died at the age of 91 in Albuquerque, NM. I knew him a little bit in the mid-1990s during my time at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I was a research assistant at the Center for National Security Studies (dissolved by the lab's leadership immediately following the Gingrich revolution in late 1994), where Rosen was an associate at the time. At CNSS he did policy-related work, but he was also still involved with the lab project that was his primary accomplishment: the huge atom smasher built during the 1960s right along the main access road to the lab, the so-called "truck route." I once interviewed him at his office there for a newspaper piece I was doing on the lab in the post-Cold War era. One of the things Rosen stood out for during my time at the lab was that he was one of the few people left who had come to Los Alamos during World War II to be part of the Manhattan Project. I don't remember much of our interview, but I do remember his account of that cross-country trip. If I can find the time, I'll dig out the tape I made of our conversation.