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Stirling Auchincloss Colgate (; November 14, 1925 – December 1, 2013) was an American physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a professor emeritus of physics, past president at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech) from 1965 to 1974, and a scion of the
Colgate toothpaste Colgate is an American brand principally used for oral hygiene products such as toothpastes, toothbrushes, mouthwashes and dental floss. Manufactured by Colgate-Palmolive, Colgate's oral hygiene products were first sold by the company in 1873, ...
family. He was America's premier diagnostician of thermonuclear weapons during the early years at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
in California. While much of his involvement with physics is still highly classified, he made many contributions in the open literature including physics education and
astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...
.


Early life and education

Colgate was born in New York City in 1925, to Henry Auchincloss and Jeanette Thurber (née Pruyn) Colgate. He attended
Los Alamos Ranch School Los Alamos Ranch School was a private ranch school for boys in the northeast corner of Sandoval County, New Mexico (since 1949, within Los Alamos County), USA, founded in 1917 near San Ildefonso Pueblo. During World War II, the school was bou ...
until 1942 when a military delegation along with input from Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest O. Lawrence decided to close the school. Colgate and others in the class were then graduated without notice. The following year he attended Cornell University to study electrical engineering. In 1944, Colgate enlisted in the merchant marine. After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, the captain of the ship Colgate was serving on called on Colgate to "tell us what it means." At that time what he explained was strictly confidential, most of all the description of
nuclear fission Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radio ...
. After being discharged in 1946, Colgate returned to Cornell University, where he completed a Bachelor of Science in 1948 and a PhD in nuclear physics in 1951, then taking up a position as postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley.


The development of the hydrogen bomb

In 1952 he moved to
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
. The laboratory had been recently created by Edward Teller with encouragement from the United States Air Force in order to compete with Los Alamos weapons research. For the purposes of developing a
hydrogen bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
, Teller assigned Colgate to the diagnostic measurements for their nuclear tests. Colgate studied the radioactive products of an explosion which were scooped from the atmosphere by specially designed aircraft. His second job was measuring the range of energy of the neutrons and higher frequency gamma rays created by the nuclear tests. Colgate's work required him to shuffle between Livermore and Los Alamos. During one trip to Los Alamos he met
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (; ) (19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian-American theoretical physicist who spent his professional life in the United States. He shared the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler for "... ...
, whom he worked with again almost ten years later. In the 1950s Colgate was in charge of thousands during the Bravo test, the first deliverable thermonuclear bomb, which akin to his earlier work, included the atmospheric sampling
Project Ashcan A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of even ...
. Upon the success of the detonation, Teller encouraged Colgate to begin research on thermonuclear fusion and plasma physics.


Later career

In 1956 Colgate and colleague Montgomery H. Johnson were recruited to investigate the resultant radiation and debris from a hydrogen bomb explosion in space. They realized that the X-ray and gamma-ray emissions of
supernova A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...
e could also set off satellites designed to detect hydrogen bomb explosions. Colgate's supernova research during this investigation ignited his interest in astrophysics. Colgate and Johnson's first attempts to understand the mechanism of a supernova began with determining the actual cause of one. They assumed that "a
shockwave In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a me ...
from the core bounce smashes into nuclear ash plummeting inwards due to the inward tug of gravity". The shock wave would turn this matter around, heating it up, causing the supernova. However, this turned out to be wrong, as Richard H. White used computer simulations to show that the shock wave would not be strong enough to trigger the event. Colgate and White began developing models of stars on the verge of collapse. White wrote a computer program combining software used to design bombs with
equations of state In physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics, an equation of state is a thermodynamic equation relating state variables, which describe the state of matter under a given set of physical conditions, such as pressure, volume, temperature, or intern ...
for a star. In discussions with a friend, Colgate found that neutrinos can develop degeneracy pressure. This pressure aided the shock wave in blowing off the outer shells of an expiring star, leaving a neutron star behind. While this research helped validate Chandrasekhar's work on limits, neutron stars were still purely hypothetical. In 1959, upon the advice of Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories, the State Department recruited Colgate as the scientific consultant on nuclear test ban negotiations in Geneva. It was here that he proposed the detection of nuclear testing by use of spy satellites, specifically the
Vela satellites Vela was the name of a group of satellites developed as the Vela Hotel element of Project Vela by the United States to detect nuclear detonations to monitor compliance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty by the Soviet Union. Vela started out a ...
. However, he also raised the possibility of false alarms caused by supernovae. Despite encouragement by Teller to follow up on the detonation of the 50-megaton Czar bomb which the Soviet Union had just detonated, Colgate decided to continue his prior research on supernovae. In 1966 his research with Johnson and White finally emerged in a paper carefully edited by Chandrasekhar. Colgate went on to serve as the president of New Mexico Tech in
Socorro, New Mexico Socorro (, '' sə-KOR-oh'') is a city in Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is in the Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of . In 2010 the population was 9,051. It is the county seat of Socorro County. Socorro is located south of A ...
from the beginning of 1965 through the end of 1974. While there he conducted research programs in astrophysics and atmospheric physics as well as leading the college. Many of his projects had colorful names inspired by the experimental configurations and goals. Some of these included DigAs (a search for early supernova in galaxies with a remote controlled telescope in real time using an IBM 360-44 mainframe computer through a digital microwave link from the New Mexico Tech campus to the school's Langmuir Laboratory)(see the PBS NOVA episode "Death of a Star", 1987, ~ 8 minutes in), Paul Bunyan's Condom (aka PBC—a long plastic tube inflated by a B-26 bomber engine/propeller pumping charged smoke up into a thunder storm cloud), and SNORT (supernova observational radio telescope—a search for radio frequency chirps caused by the dispersive media between the receiver and the distant supernova). From 1975 until his death, Colgate worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and was a professor emeritus at New Mexico Tech. He continued his research into supernova and received the 2006 Los Alamos medal from LANL. Colgate had a specially-designed laboratory on the New Mexico Tech campus where he continued his research until mid-2013, when he ceased work due to failing health. In 1984 Colgate co-founded the Santa Fe Institute.


Notes


Sources

* * * See chapter 6 in particular.


External links


2005 Video Interview with Stirling Auchincloss Colgate by Cynthia C. Kelly
Voices of the Manhattan Project {{DEFAULTSORT:Colgate, Stirling 1925 births 2013 deaths Cornell University College of Engineering alumni American nuclear physicists University of California, Berkeley staff New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel Santa Fe Institute people