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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Spencer Weart

HistorianFrance

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Spencer Weart Listen to Spencer Weart’s Oral History on Voices of the Manhattan Project

Spencer Weart is a historian of science. Born in Larchmont, New York in 1942, Weart grew up in an age of excitement toward space and science fiction. Since he enjoyed science in high school, Weart initially decided to become a physicist. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Cornell in 1963 before getting his PhD in Physics and Astrophysics in 1968 from the University of Colorado, Boulder. After his academic work in physics, Weart decided to pursue a career as a historian of science. He was the long-running director of the Center for the History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) in College Park, Maryland from 1971 until his retirement in 2009. 

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