02/16/2022
https://www.facebook.com/107230415198881/posts/120606633861259/
Detroit Armenians Saint John Armenian Apostolic Church
Saint Sarkis Armenian Apostolic Church of Pasadena
🇦🇲🇺🇸 Nerses Krikorian - was one of the developers of the US nuclear program. He was called the legend of the once secret city of Los Alamos (New Mexico), where the American atomic bomb was developed.
The parents of the future scientist managed to escape during the Armenian Genocide in 1915, but for four years they had to wander around different countries. Nerses Krikorian was born in the open air in 1921, during a period of endless wanderings. Four years later, the family managed to find asylum in Canada and then move to the United States.
When Krikorian was four, his parents moved to the US and settled in Niagara Falls, where his father became a farm worker and his mother raised the children.
Nerses' parents did not have an education, but they did everything possible so that their children went to college and became highly qualified specialists.
When Nerses went to kindergarten, he barely spoke English. Sixteen years later, he graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and began working for the chemical company Union Carbide. The laboratory where he worked produced highly enriched uranium.
Already in 1943, Krikorian was involved in the famous "Manhattan Project" (the code name for the US nuclear weapons program). Nerses was then only 22 years old. In an interview, he recalled: “... Then there was a short break, but in 1946 I returned to Los Alamos (it was here that the national laboratory was founded to work on the Manhattan Project) and stayed for life. I fell in love with this city, but the main thing, of course, is the amazingly interesting work and the people who surrounded me then.
When the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Krikorian already knew what he was working on. "I then thought, 'The war is ending, and I hope we never have to use this for any reason again.''
In his interviews, he repeatedly said that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 should never again be repeated on earth.
After the war, Krikorian was offered a move to the southwest to continue work on the Manhattan Project. Here he met his wife, Katherine Patterson, who also came to Los Alamos to work on the Manhattan Project as a member of the Women's Army Corps. He had a brilliant career that spanned four and a half decades; owned six patents, published a number of studies.
In 1972, Nerses Krikorian was asked to join the newly formed intelligence unit. His transition to the intelligence agencies as an analyst was also due to the fact that he spoke Armenian and Russian. He began to study Russian back in the 60s: the only books on high-temperature chemistry that he managed to find were in Russian.
For many years, Krikorian was responsible for security issues in the relevant US intelligence structures.
Nerses Krikoryan retired in 1991, but continued to work in science until his death in 2017.
Throughout his life, the scientist did not forget about his Armenian roots. In the 1990s, he visited Armenia several times.
An Armenian who moved to the United States with a stateless document is still called one of the “giants of Los Alamos”, whose activities can hardly be overestimated today.
According to open sources
