Bacher, Robert

That necessity was painful, as the Los Alamos technical history makes clear The implosion was the only real hope, and from current evidence not a very good one. Oppenheimer agonized over the problem to the point that he considered resigning his directorship. Robert Bacher, the sturdy leader of the Experimental Physics Division, took long walks with him in those days to share his pain and eventually dissuaded him. There was no one else who could do the job, Bacher argued without Oppenheimer there would be no bomb in time to shorten the war and save lives. 

Oppenheimer acted quickly to maximize the laboratory s efforts to master implosion. Only if the implosion method could be perfected would the plutoniiun produced at Hanford come into play. Without either a plutonium gun bomb or implosion weapon, the burden would fall entirely on uranium and the less efficient gun method. Oppenheimer directed a major reorganization of Los Alamos in July 1944 that prepared the way for the final development of an implosion bomb. Robert Bacher took over G Division (for gadget) to experiment with implosion and design a bomb George Kistiakowsky led X Division (for explosives) in work on the explosive components Hans Bethe continued to head up theoretic studies and Deke Parsons now focused on overall bomb construction and... 

Late in October 1946 Truman selected William W. Waymack and Robert F. Bacher to round out the first Commission. Pulitzer Prize winner Way-mack was the editor of the Des Moines Register and Tribune and a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Bacher was the only scientist on the Commission. A highly respected physicist, he also had the strong endorsement of Bush. Bacher had worked at Los Alamos during the war years and had recently returned to his academic post at Cornell University. 

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