Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Murray Peshkin (1925-2017) was an American physicist. 

Peshkin was recruited by the Army to work at Los Alamos during World War II. He was assigned to do mathematical calculation in a group working under Dick Feynman. After the Trinity test, Peshkin was part of a group that was in charge of retrieving blast gauges. 

Peshkin knew and disliked David Greenglass, the famous spy. He also worked with Louis Slotin after the war, but was not involved in the fatal “tickling the dragon’s tail” experiment. 

After the war, Peshkin was a professor at Northwestern University and worked for many years at Argonne National Laboratory. He passed away on September 20, 2017 at the age of 92. For more about Murray’s life, click here.

Related Profiles

George Kistiakowsky

Los Alamos, NM

George Kistiakowsky (1900-1982) was a Ukrainian-American physical chemist.  He joined the Manhattan Project in late January 1944, leaving his role as chief of the National Defense Research Committee’s Explosives Division.

R.H. Gabriel

Hanford, WA

Gabriel worked at the 300 Area at Hanford during the Manhattan Project.

Willis T. Brady

Los Alamos, NM

Florence Bunch Worthington

Y-12 Plant

Worthington worked in the chemical department of the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project.