Arnold Kramish, a Denver native who worked on the Manhattan Project and became an expert on nuclear proliferation and espionage, passed away June 15, 2010, in Washington, DC. He was 87.
Before graduating college, Mr. Kramish worked in the engineering division of the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
In 1944, he was severely burned when a uranium enrichment device exploded in the Philadelphia lab. His chances for survival were considered slim.
After the war, Mr. Kramish became a nuclear intelligence and policy expert, serving with the Atomic Energy Commission until 1951 and then joining the staff of the RAND Corporation.
He worked with Edward Teller on the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s and was the only scientist who participated in the interrogation of Soviet spy David Greenglass, the brother-in-law of Julius Rosenberg.
Mr. Kramish was born June 6, 1923, in Denver. He graduated DU in 1945 and received his MA in physics from Harvard in 1947.
In a memoir published more than 50 years after the Philadelphia explosion, he attributed his unanticipated survival to chicken soup that his mother carried from her home in Denver to his hospital bedside in Philadelphia.
In the 1970s, Mr. Kramish worked as an arms control adviser for the State Department in Paris.
He directed a White House study that approved the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as Star Wars, under President Reagan.
Mr. Kramish is survived by his wife Vivian Raker; son Robert Kramish of Berkeley, Calif., and daughter Pamela Jones of Hickory, NC; sister Elaine Dillon of Denver; and four grandchildren.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News.
