Biography
Richard Rhodes was born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1937. Following his mother's suicide on July 25, 1938, Rhodes, along with his older (by a year and a half) brother Stanley, was raised in and around Kansas City, Missouri, by his father, a railroad boilermaker with a third-grade education. When Rhodes was ten their father remarried a woman who starved, exploited, and abused the children. Stan, age 13, standing 5’ 4” and weighing an emaciated 98 pounds, saved both boys by walking into a police station and reporting to the authorities the conditions under which they lived. (For these details and others see Rhodes’ memoir A Hole in the World.) The boys were sent to the Andrew Drumm Institute, an institution for boys founded in 1928 in Independence, Missouri. The admission of the brothers was something of an anomaly as the institution was designed for orphaned or indigent boys and they fit neither category. The Drumm Institute is still in operation today, and now accepts both boys and girls. Rhodes became a member of the board of trustees in 1991.
Richard and Stanley lived at Drumm for the remainder of their adolescence. Both graduated from high school. Rhodes was admitted to Yale University and received a Scholarship, which awarded him full tuition, room, board, and other expenses for four years. Rhodes graduated with honors in 1959 and was a member of Manuscript Society. He went on to publish 23 books and numerous articles for national magazines; his best-known work, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, was published in 1986 and earned Rhodes the Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards. Many of his personal documents and research materials are part of the Kansas Collection at the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.
He is the father of two children, is a grandfather, and currently resides in California with his wife, Dr. Ginger Rhodes. His website, www.RichardRhodes.com, offers a schedule of his public appearances.
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