Alex Wellerstein of Stevens Institute of Technology

Most accounts of nuclear weapons development and design have focused almost exclusively on the contributions of physicists. While these are indeed important, especially to the early history of nuclear weapons, this approach has tended to overlook the ways in which many of the most important and interesting developments in these weapons have come from electrical engineering. In this talk, Prof. Wellerstein will go over the once-Top Secret ways in which electrical engineering contributed to the development of nuclear weapons, and will illustrate how these contributions are actually what lie behind some of the trickier political questions relating to the use and non-use of nuclear weapons, both historically and in the present day.

Additionally, Prof. Wellerstein will outline what is known about the most recently unveiled alleged Soviet spy, Oscar Seborer, a City College electrical engineer, and his potential contributions to the Soviet atomic bomb project. Seborer worked on the Manhattan Project, the effort to build an atomic bomb, at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and then at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico.

Biography:

Alex Wellerstein is an Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Wellerstein specializes in the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear secrecy. His first book, “Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States,” has been published by the University of Chicago Press. Wellerstein received his BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley, and his PhD from the Department of History of Science at Harvard University. He is the creator of the online nuclear effects simulator, the NUKEMAP, and has written for many popular venues, including Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.

Address:Assistant Professor and David & G.G. Farber Faculty Fellow in Science and Technology Studies , Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, United States