Donald J. Hughes (April 2, 1915 – April 12, 1960) was an American nuclear physicist, chiefly notable as one of the signers off the Franck Report in June, 1945, recommending that the United States not use the atomic bomb as a weapon to prompt the surrender of Japan in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

.James Franck, et al
The "Franck Report": A Report to the Secretary of War
June 1945. Before the war Hughes worked at the

Naval Ordnance Laboratory The Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL) was a facility in the White Oak area of Montgomery County, Maryland. It is now used as the headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Origins The U.S. Navy Mine Unit, later the Mine Laboratory at ...

. By June 1945, the U.S. was deciding whether to use an atomic bomb against Japan, and a very few nuclear scientists knew about the weapon's potential. Some, including Hughes, were wary, and wanted to urge the

President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

to choose a different option. Arthur Compton appointed a committee to meet in secret, in all-night sessions in a highly secure environment. This committee included Hughes, and was chaired by

James Franck James Franck (; 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate i ...

. The final report, largely written by committee-member

Eugene Rabinowitch Eugene Rabinowitch (1901–1973) was a Russian-born American biophysicist who is known for his work in photosynthesis and nuclear energy. He was a co-author of the Franck Report and a co-founder in 1945 of the '' Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ...

, recommended that the nuclear bomb not be used, and proposed that either a demonstration of the "new weapon" be made before the eyes of representatives of all of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

, on a barren island or desert, or to try to keep the existence of the nuclear bomb secret for as long as possible.''Minority Report''
by Josh Schollmeyer
"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists"
January/February 2005 (vol. 61, no. 1), pp. 38-39. The advice of the "Franck Report" was not followed, however, and the U.S. dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war Hughes went to

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

and formed a group of physicists working on contemporary problems in nuclear science. His work centered on the

neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons beh ...

. Many of his publications were translated into Russian; more copies of his work were printed in the USSR than in the USA. He also spent one year at Oxford teaching. He wrote a popular science book, ''The Neutron Story'', published 1959. Other works: Pile Neutron Research (1953) Neutron Optics (1954) Neutron Cross Sections (1957) On Nuclear Energy (1957) Neutron Cross Sections (A compilation which the Government Printing Office published for the second Geneva conference.) Hughes died suddenly of a heart attack in 1960.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hughes, Donald J 1915 births 1960 deaths 20th-century American physicists American nuclear physicists Experimental physicists Manhattan Project people Fellows of the American Physical Society