Michael Warchol Dies; Physicist in A-Bomb Project

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 near 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.

Warchol later worked on airplane navigation safety with Flash Technology Corp. of Nashua, N.H., and for EG&G; Inc. of Wellesley, Mass., a scientific engineering firm founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Harold Edgerton, who led the team that developed the atomic bomb detonator.