A Manhattan Project Veteran Had a Unique View of Atomic Bomb Work - The New York Times

Benjamin Bederson turned past the page in the diary from long ago, the page he had burned a hole through, and mentioned things he had done since that summer of 1945.

“Was an experimental atomic physicist,” he said. “Worked as a professor at New York University, taught almost every course in physics, was editor in chief of the American Physical Society and helped usher physics journals into the electronic age.”

He left out the part about helping to usher in the atomic age — the part about testing the ignition switches for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. The part about having been one of the lowest-ranking soldiers assigned to the Manhattan Project, the huge research-and-development effort that delivered the first atomic devices, and as a corporal or a private in his early 20s, one of the youngest. The part about having been one of the few soldiers sent to key spots at key moments as the work progressed.

“That makes it sound a little grandiose,” Dr. Bederson, now 93, said modestly.

A Manhattan Project Veteran Had a Unique View of Atomic Bomb Work - The New York Times