William McMillan, 83; Chemist Worked on Manhattan Project
William George McMillan, 83, who worked on the Manhattan Project and later taught chemistry at UCLA, died Nov. 25 in West Los Angeles of a heart attack.
Educated at Montebello High School and UCLA, he earned a doctorate in chemical physics at Columbia University. He went on to complete a fellowship at the University of Chicago, where he received a Guggenheim Foundation grant. During his graduate program at Columbia and in Chicago, he worked with Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.
Returning to Los Angeles in 1946, McMillan began teaching chemistry at UCLA while working as a research physicist with the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. He served as a science advisor to the military in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967, and at UCLA established defense science seminars, bringing together leaders from the military, science and government to identify and resolve problems.
After he became a professor emeritus, McMillan founded McMillan Science Associates, a research firm based in Westwood.
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