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Joseph Laws McKibben

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Joseph L. McKibben
Image
Joseph L. McKibben
Born1912 (2026-07-06UTC00:26:36)
Died2001 (aged 8889)
Alma materUniversity of Wisconsin
Scientific career
Institutions

Joseph Laws McKibben (1912 2001) was an American physicist and engineer who worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer as a group leader on the Manhattan Project.[1] He personally witnessed the Trinity test and flipped the switches that activated the timers that set off the atomic bomb at Trinity.[2][3]

McKibben, motivated by his daughter Karan's paralysed hands due to polio, also invented the Air Muscle in 1957.[4][5]

He was born in 1912 in Missouri. He died in 2001 in Los Alamos, aged 89.[6] His remains, and those of his wife and daughter, were interred at Guaje Pines Cemetery in Los Alamos. [7]

References

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  1. "Manhattan District History, Project Y, The Los Alamos Project" (PDF). U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information.
  2. "Joe McKibben, Scientist, Trinity Site, Los Alamos, NM, Manhattan Project Veteran, Scientist, Trinity Test Eyewitness". Atomic Heritage Foundation.
  3. Rhodes, Richard (1986). The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-44133-7. OCLC 13793436.
  4. Gurstelle, William (21 May 2015). "Making a Simple Air Muscle - A father's love inspired this A-bomb maker to invent a pneumatic actuator that's used in robots today". Makezine. Santa Rosa, California, USA: Make.co. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  5. Gurstelle, William (1 Feb 2017). ReMaking History, Volume 3: Makers of the Modern World. Canada: Maker Media, Inc., 1160. p. Chapter 9, Joseph McKibben and the Air Muscle. ISBN 9781680450682.
  6. "Joseph Laws McKibben". PeopleLegacy.com.
  7. https://www.interment.net/data/us/nm/los-alamos/guaje-pines/index.htm
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