Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz

Jovan Stosic September 3, 2018

Ross Lomanitz (1921–2003) was an American physicist. He was born in Bryan, Texas and grew up in Oklahoma. His father was an agricultural chemist and named his son after the Italian socialist Giovanni Rossi, who had founded an agricultural commune in Brazil in the 1890s. Lomanitz graduated from high school at age 14 and went on to earn his bachelor of science degree in physics from the University of Oklahoma and his doctorate in theoretical physics from Cornell University under Richard Feynman.

Source: Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz – Wikipedia

Boris Pash

Jovan Stosic September 3, 2018

Boris Theodore Pash (born Boris Fedorovich Pashkovsky; Russian: Борис Фёдорович Пашковский) 20 June 1900 – 11 May 1995) was a United States Army military intelligence officer. He commanded the Alsos Mission during World War II and retired with the rank of colonel.

Source: Boris Pash – Wikipedia

Steve Nelson

Jovan Stosic September 2, 2018

Stjepan Mesaros, best known as Steve Nelson (1903–1993), was a Croatian-born American political activist. Nelson achieved public notoriety as the political commissar of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and a leading functionary of the Communist Party, USA. Nelson is best remembered for having been prosecuted and convicted under the Smith Act in 1953.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Nelson_(activist)

Joseph Weinberg

Jovan Stosic September 2, 2018

Joseph “Joe” Weinberg (1917-2002) was an American physicist.

Weinberg was a precocious young scientist who began his educational career at the age of 15 at the City College of New York. After receiving his M.S. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he arrived at the Radiation Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1938. J. Robert Oppenheimer quickly took to the sharp young physicist, and Weinberg became part of an intimate group of Berkeley graduate students who worked with Oppenheimer at the Rad Lab. 

Many of those same students would receive opportunities to work at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project. Weinberg, however, would not be given the chance, after it was discovered that he had ties to the Communist Party. In fact, in 1943, the FBI illegally recorded Weinberg discussing details about an atomic bomb–and the work being done at Berkeley to create one–with local Communist Party leader Steve Nelson.

In 1949, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) launched an investigation into Weinberg. At his hearing, he flatly denied ever having met Nelson. Despite this, HUAC branded him as “Scientist X” and accused him of spying for the Soviet government. Sensationalist media stories ran with the “Scientist X” moniker. One even accused Weinberg of hand-delivering uranium-235 to the Soviets.

The charges weighed heavily on Weinberg, and he was indicted for perjury in 1952. Even though he would eventually be acquitted less than a year later, he lost his professorship at the University of Minnesota and his career trajectory was negatively impacted. It would take him several years to restore his legitimacy in the field. He eventually became a distinguished professor at Syracuse University. 

http://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/joseph-weinberg