Joan Hinton - Nuclear Scientist

Nuclear Scientist

Joan Hinton studied physics at Bennington College and the University of Wisconsin. She observed the Trinity test at Alamogordo and wrote about it:

“It was like being at the bottom of an ocean of light. We were bathed in it from all directions. The light withdrew into the bomb as if the bomb sucked it up. Then it turned purple and blue and went up and up and up. We were still talking in whispers when the cloud reached the level where it was struck by the rising sunlight so it cleared out the natural clouds. We saw a cloud that was dark and red at the bottom and daylight at the top. Then suddenly the sound reached us. It was very sharp and rumbled and all the mountains were rumbling with it. We suddenly started talking out loud and felt exposed to the whole world.”

Joan Hinton was shocked when the US government, three weeks later, dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She left the Manhattan Project and lobbied the government in Washington to internationalise nuclear power.