Alvin Weinberg has an incredible resume, if you will.
He came to Oak Ridge in 1945 as a Manhattan Project scientist and stayed in the city until his death in 2006. He was an influential nuclear physicist and the longest-serving director of Oak Ridge National Lab, home of some of the country's most important scientific achievements. He was a scientific bridge between the use of the nuclear bomb to the importance of climate change.
But the personal stories behind the man are far, far more interesting.
His impact on science, and on scientific thinking in general, are becoming more appreciated through the digital publication of his voluminous handwritten letters. They not only get into the nitty-gritty of nuclear science and Oak Ridge, they expose the deeply philosophical conversations Weinberg was having about the power and danger of nuclear energy in the years after the Oak Ridge-developed bomb dropped on Japan to end World War II.