Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

John Adams

Composer

Expert
John Adams

John Adams is an American composer of contemporary classical music. After graduating from Harvard in 1972, Adams moved to California, where his compositions began to attract attention. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Adams and his works grew in popularity and prominence. 

One of his best-known works is Doctor Atomic, which premiered in 2005. Doctor Atomic focuses on the scientists, primarily J. Robert Oppenheimer, at the Los Alamos Laboratory in the weeks leading up to the Trinity Test.

Related Profiles

Denise Kiernan

Oak Ridge, TN

Denise Kiernan has worked as a journalist and producer. She is best known for The Girls of Atomic City, which came out in March 2013 and immediately shot to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list – and stayed there.

Avner Cohen

Israel

Avner Cohen is an Israeli-American historian and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Darrell Dvorak

Trinity Site

Darrell Dvorak’s father-in-law, Colonel Clifford John Heflin, worked for the Manhattan Project.

Ruth Howes

Los Alamos, NM

Ruth Howes is professor emerita of physics and astronomy at Ball State University and former chair of the physics department at Marquette University with an interest in the history of women physicists.