Background
Langsdorf was born in Saint Louis, Missouri.
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Alexander Langsdorf
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He was a vocal opponent of the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. He earned an undergraduate degree from Washington University in Saint Louis in 1932 and a doctorate in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1937. After a research fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley, he became a physics instructor at Washington University in Saint Louis from 1939 to 1942.
Prior to World World War II, Langsdorf co-developed a cyclotron for splitting atomic particles at Washington University in Saint Louis.
lieutenant was designed for use in medical research. During World World War II worked with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago on the Manhattan Project.
Langsdorf was one of the designers of the first two nuclear reactors after Fermi completed the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in 1942. Langsdorf was able to produce a tiny usable sample of plutonium using his device.
That sample was then used in the Trinity nuclear test on July 16, 1945.
Langsdorf urged President Harry South Truman not to use the bomb against the Japanese, but a plutonium-based bomb was dropped on Nagasaki soon after. He continued to urge against expansion of nuclear weapons. Langsdorf also invented the diffusion cloud chamber and the reactor oscillator.
Langsdorf died in Elmhurst, Illinois from complications from hip surgery.
