Samuel T. Cohen is a physicist who is known for inventing the neutron bomb. He got his physics degree from UCLA. In 1944 he worked on the Manhattan project with calculating how neutrons behaved in Fat Man. In the Vietnam War, Cohen argued that using small neutron bombs would end the war quickly and save many American lives, but politicians were not amenable to his ideas. He was a member of the Los Alamos Tactical Nuclear Weapons Panel in the early 1970s. During Reagan's presidency, Cohen claims to have convinced Reagan to make about a thousand neutron bombs. Like many of his claims, however (including those about neutron bomb proliferation and the use of "Red Mercury" for fusion weapons), it is not substantiated and is significantly at odds with the mainstream understanding of the situation.

Cohen "worked in France on low-yield, highly discriminate tactical nuclear weapons in 1979-1980". (ref, Cohen link online)

"In 1979, Pope John Paul II conferred on one of the authors (Sam Cohen) a peace medal for his invention, the neutron bomb. This was a small nuclear weapon designed to do its work, killing enemy military forces, without destroying a country’s infrastructure." (Cohen, March 11, 2003) (needs confirmation)

References

• Sam Cohen and Joseph D. Douglass, Jr , "The Nuclear Threat That Doesn't Exist – or Does It?", March 11, 2003, online; Red mercury, fusion-only neutron bombs, Russia, Iraq, etc
• ---- "North Korea's Nuclear Initiative", April 28 2004 online
• ---- "Development of New Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons", March 9, 2003, online
• ---- "The Rogue Nuclear Threat", April 26, 2002, online
• Joe Douglass, The Conflict Over Tactical Nuclear Weapons Policy in Europe (1968)
• William R. Van Cleave, S. T. Cohen, Nuclear Weapons, Policies, and the Test Ban Issue, 1987, ISBN 0275923126
• Samuel T. Cohen, We Can Prevent World War III, 1985, 2001, ISBN 0915463105
• ---- The Truth About the Neutron Bomb: The Inventor of the Bomb Speaks Out, William Morrow & Co., 1983, ISBN 0688016464
• ---- Shame: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2000), ISBN 0738822302, memoir

See also

• ballotechnics
• Frank Barnaby nuclear weapons designer