People
HERBERT YORK
(Physicist, Berkeley Rad Lab, Oak Ridge, director Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
People > Scientists
Herbert Frank York was born on November 24, 1921, into a working-class family in Rochester, New York. He entered the University of Rochester in 1939 to study physics and earned his M.S. in spring 1943. As physicists were in high demand due to the war effort, York was recruited in fall 1942 by Ernest Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley and, upon graduation, began work at the lab in May 1943. His first assignment was as a crew member working on the R-1 calutron, one of two prototypes, under the direction of Frank Oppenheimer, younger brother of Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos laboratory. The calutrons were to be used in the electromagnetic method for separating the uranium-235 isotope that would fuel the uranium bomb. Multiple calutrons in an oval racetrack configuration would be required for the full-scale separation facilities to be built at the Y-12 site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. While the prototypes at Berkeley did not even remotely resemble a production model, they were the primary research tools for designing and developing the calutron units that would comprise the racetracks at Oak Ridge. Construction of the 96-unit Alpha racetracks at the Y-12 site began in February 1943. A second stage, the smaller, 36-unit Beta racetracks, were approved the following month, initiating additional research efforts at Berkeley. The first Alpha began operation in November and soon encountered numerous problems. York was part of a Berkeley team sent in response by Lawrence to assist at Y-12. York would remain at Oak Ridge for the rest of the war. He was responsible for the degree of purity of the product coming from the Betas. Although York would later recall that he spent a lot of time "sweeping up" and painting racks to hold equipment, he played a primary role in attempting to adjust the equipment and optimize output. York was one of a generation of young graduate student scientists and engineers that got their seminal training working on the Manhattan Project. He later remembered wartime Oak Ridge as an exciting time, as he had "never been involved in anything of that scope or importance before." He would add that the "most important thing I got out of Oak Ridge in the long run was what I absorbed simply from observing-largely unconsciously--how Lawrence went about running a large-scale high-tech enterprise." York's Manhattan Project experience would shape and inform his professional life and career throughout the postwar years. 
After the war, York returned to Berkeley and began doctoral studies in physics. Robert Oppenheimer taught York's quantum mechanics class, and Emilio Segrè, a close protégé of Enrico Fermi, became York's thesis advisor. All the while, York worked with Lawrence at the Rad Lab. He received a Ph.D. in 1949 and in 1950 began a brief career as an assistant professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1952, Lawrence and Edward Teller obtained approval for the establishment of a second weapons laboratory at Livermore, California, to augment the work being done at Los Alamos. Lawrence asked York to draw up plans for the new laboratory. "I began to sketch out my ideas about how to go about it," York recalled, "the first elements of a research program, new facilities, manpower, and the rest. After a few weeks of such work, Lawrence asked me if I thought I could run it.'" At the age of 31, York became the Livermore laboratory's first director. In spring 1958, York left Livermore and became chief scientist of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Department of Defense's response to launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union. In December of that same year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him the first director of Defense Research and Engineering with authority over all research, development, tests, and evaluation programs of the Department of Defense. In 1961, York returned to California and became chancellor of the University of California at San Diego. In the following years, he would also become a leading advocate for arms control. Herbert York died on May 19, 2009. To view the next people section of the Manhattan Project, proceed to Civilian Organizations.
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The text for this page is original to the Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources. Major sources consulted include the following. Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., The New World, 1939-1946: Volume I, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (Washington: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1972), 56-60, 91-96, 141-67, 294-96, 298-301; Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, Atomic Shield, 1947-1952: Volume II, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (Washington: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1972), 583-84; Herbert F. York, Making Weapons, Talking Peace: a Physicist's Odyssey from Hiroshima to Geneva (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 4-20, "never been involved…" quote p. 17, "most important thing…" quote p. 18, and Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of the Arms Race (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), 15-24; Katie Walter, "Herbert F. York (1921-2009): A List of Firsts, An Ambassador for Peace," "I began to sketch…" quote in text; Barton Hacker, "A Short History of the Laboratory at Livermore"; Interview of Herbert York by Alex Wellerstein on August 24, 2008, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD. The portrait of York appears courtesy Department of Energy. The shot of York with Lawrence and Teller was provided by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.