Alice Kimball Smith

Smith was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1907.[1] She first went to college at Mount Holyoke College[4] where she obtained her A.B in 1928.[1] Eight years later, she got her Ph.D from Yale University.[5]

In 1943 her and her husband Cyril moved to Los Alamos when her husband joined the Manhattan Project.[1] She soon got a teaching job in Los Alamos where her and her husband became friends with J. Robert Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty.[1] She would use her experiences around Los Alamos as material in her future books.[6][7][8] Smith, in her study of American A-bomb scientists interviewed many Los Alamos scientists who gave blank answers about the nature of the weapon that they were creating.[9]

Smith and her husband moved to Chicago after World War II ended.[1] Smith became the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists assistant editor where she worked for many years.[1] She was a lecturer at Roosevelt College and a dean, assistant dean and scholar at Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study.[1][10] Smith also briefly was a guest columnist in the New York Times in 1983.[11]

Smith wrote books like A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists’ Movement in America, 1945-1947[12][13] and co edited (with Charles Weiner)[14] Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections[15] with the latter being a collection of letters from J.Robert Oppenheimer between 1922 and 1945.[1][16][17][18] Her book A Peril and a Hope: The Scientist' Movement in America, 1945-1947 was nominated for a National Book Award for Nonfiction in the Science, Philosophy and Religion category.[19] A Peril and a Hope was about the growing negative sentiment of scientists about creating the atomic bomb due to their concerns over the sociopolitical consequences of its usage.[20]

Alice Kimball was married to British metallurgist Cyril Smith.[1] She died on February 6, 2001 at her home in Ellensburg, Washington.[10]