About Stirling Colgate
Stirling Auchincloss Colgate was an American nuclear physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a professor emeritus of physics at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology from 1965 to 1974, of which he also served its president. 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. Colgate and Johnson's first attempts to understand the mechanism of a supernova began with determining the actual cause of one. The laboratory had been recently created by Edward Teller with encouragement from the United States Air Force in order to compete with weapon research at the Los Alamos National Laboratories. His second job was measuring the range of energy of the neutrons and higher frequency gamma rays created by the nuclear tests.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.