Alice Kimball Smith

Smith was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1907.^[1] She first went to college at Mount Holyoke College^[4] where she obtained her A.B in 1928.^[1] Eight years later, she got her PhD from Yale University.^[5]

In 1943 she and her husband Cyril moved to Los Alamos when her husband joined the Manhattan Project.^[1] She soon got a teaching job in Los Alamos where she and her husband became friends with J. Robert Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty.^[1] She would use her experiences around Los Alamos as material in her future books.^[6][7][8] Smith, in her study of American A-bomb scientists interviewed many Los Alamos scientists who gave blank answers about the nature of the weapon that they were creating.^[9]

Smith and her husband moved to Chicago after World War II ended.^[1] Smith became the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists assistant editor where she worked for many years.^[1] She was a lecturer at Roosevelt College and a dean, assistant dean and scholar at Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study.^[1][10] Smith also briefly was a guest columnist in The New York Times in 1983.^[11]

Smith's books include A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists' Movement in America, 1945–1947^[12][13] and co edited (with Charles Weiner)^[14] Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections^[15] with the latter being a collection of letters from J. Robert Oppenheimer between 1922 and 1945.^{[1][16][17][18]} Her book A Peril and a Hope: The Scientist' Movement in America, 1945–1947 was nominated for a National Book Award for Nonfiction in the Science, Philosophy and Religion category.^[19] A Peril and a Hope was about the growing negative sentiment of scientists about creating the atomic bomb due to their concerns over the sociopolitical consequences of its usage.^[20]

Alice Kimball was married to British metallurgist Cyril Smith.^[1] She died on February 6, 2001, at her home in Ellensburg, Washington.^[10]