Michael Warchol, Physicist Who Worked on A-Bomb, Dies
From Times Wire Services
LAWRENCE, Mass. —
Michael Warchol, a nuclear physicist who was instrumental in developing the complex triggering device for the first atomic bomb, has died of a heart attack. He was 72.
Warchol, who died Saturday in Lawrence General Hospital, was among the researchers who developed the instruments that triggered the experimental bomb at Alamogordo, N.M., on July 16, 1945.
The electromagnetic trigger he helped devise permitted the detonation 10 miles from ground zero.
For the next decade, Warchol continued work in nuclear technology, traveling to the test sites of Frenchman’s Flats, Nev., and Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
