Neutron bomb inventor Samuel T. Cohen, who in 1958 designed the tactical nuclear weapon intended to kill people but do minimal damage to cities, has died in Los Angeles at 89.
Mr Cohen’s son Paul Cohen told the Los Angeles Times and New York Times that his father had died of stomach cancer.
Mr Cohen backed the neutron bomb as a more moral alternative to other nuclear weapons.
The neutron bomb used tiny particles that could zip through objects with little damage but kill humans.
The US developed the weapon in the 1980s, and other nations are believed to have possessed them. But the neutron bomb was never widely embraced.
A New York native, Mr Cohen studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and helped build the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
Born in Brooklyn, Prof. Cohen went to college at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1943 and joining the army.
The army trained him in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and assigned him to work on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II. He worked on the calculations for Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
After the war on a 1951 trip to Seoul, South Korea for the RAND Corporation, he saw a city largely destroyed by the Korean War, and later said in his memoirs that it provided the inspiration for the small-scale neutron bomb.
Prof. Cohen spent much of his life advocating its adoption, saying the bomb’s limited effects were a more moral alternative to other weapons.
“It’s the most sane and moral weapon ever devised,” Prof. Cohen told the New York Times in September. “It’s the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war. When the war is over, the world is still intact.”
Factbox
• A conventional nuclear weapon releases massive amounts of radiation and heat that incinerate humans and inanimate objects alike, leaving behind radioactive debris that contaminates the area for years or decades.
• A neutron bomb, or enhanced radiation weapon, in contrast, has only about one-tenth the explosive power of a comparable fission weapon, and can be controlled more precisely, restricted to military targets and kept away from civilians.
• Those neutrons can still cause severe, lethal damage to the nuclei of living cells, killing combatants quickly, usually by attacking their central nervous system.
• Because of its limited range, there is little danger to nearby civilians and little or no residual radiation to threaten the environment after the battle.
• The US developed the weapon in the 1980s, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and other nations including France and Russia are believed to have possessed them. But the neutron bomb was never widely embraced.