Join us April 16 at 1 p.m. at Desertview Theater for “The Science & Technology of the Manhattan Project, 1932-1945.” Lockwood Carlson will document America’s project to develop and implement an atomic bomb during World War II—an almost impossible technical goal. It involved thousands of people but relied on the scientific expertise, engineering skills, and innovations of a select group of scientists and engineers put together at Los Alamos, N.M., over less than one year. How did they confront and overcome so many “show stoppers”? When the primary approach failed to meet the strategic needs of the armed forces, a whole new concept was developed, tested, scaled up and “weaponized” in three to four years. This is the story of nuclear fission from the 1930s to August 1945 and the key participants as they raced to complete their mission—not knowing if they could reach their goal in time.
Lockwood Carlson holds a Theoretical Physics PhD from the University Wyoming and performed graduate research at Princeton University on electrodynamics of black holes in General Relativity. He retired from 3M Company in 2001 as Corporate Scientist with several patents in optical materials for digital displays.
Earlier, he was the chief scientist for a major DoD program on advanced technology and held the endowed chair in Technological Leadership at the University of Minnesota for 12 years—on the faculty of the Management of Technology program.
He also teaches courses on cosmology, astrophysics, nanotechnology, quantum field theory, energy issues, artificial intelligence in medical science, and climate science at University of Arizona OLLI, University of Minnesota OLLI, and SaddleBrooke Lifelong Learning Institute. Lockwood consults on advanced technology for Medtronic, Inc., and serves on the board of TSI Inc., a leading global nanotechnology company. He also consults on emerging technology in nuclear energy (small modular reactors) and renewable energy technologies.