Edward Creutz

Edward Creutz (January 23, 1913 – June 27, 2009) was an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project at the Metallurgical Laboratory and the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. After the war he became a professor of physics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He was Vice President of Research at General Atomics from 1955 to 1970. He published over 65 papers on botany, physics, mathematics, metallurgy and science policy, and held 18 patents relating to nuclear energy.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Creutz helped Princeton University build its first cyclotron. During World War II he worked on nuclear reactor design under Eugene Wigner at the Metallurgical Laboratory, designing the cooling system for the first water-cooled reactors. He led a group that studied the metallurgy of uranium and other elements used in reactor designs. In October 1944, he moved to the Los Alamos Laboratory, where he became a group leader.

After the war ended, Creutz accepted an offer to come to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he became the head of its physics department and its nuclear research center in 1948. In 1955 he returned to Los Alamos to evaluate its thermonuclear fusion program for the Atomic Energy Commission. While there he accepted an offer to become vice president for research and development and the director of its John Jay Hopkins Laboratory for Pure and Applied Science at General Atomics. Under his leadership, General Atomics developed TRIGA, a nuclear reactor for universities and laboratories.

Creutz served as an assistant director of the National Science Foundation from 1970 to 1977, and then as director of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, where he took particular interest in the museum's preparation of a Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawaii.

Early life Creutz was born on January 23, 1913, in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, the son of Lester Creutz, a high school history teacher, and Grace Smith Creutz, a general science teacher. He had two older brothers, John and Jim, and a younger sister, Edith. The family moved to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in 1916, Monroe, Wisconsin, in 1920, and to Janesville, Wisconsin, in 1927. He played a number of musical instruments, including the mandolin, ukulele and trombone. He entered the University of Wisconsin and studied mathematics and physics. under Breit's supervision. Creutz studied the corrosion of metals in a water-cooled system, He was also a member of the executive board at the Argonne National Laboratory from 1946 to 1958, and a consultant at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1946 to 1958. In addition to his work on nuclear physics, he cultivated flowers and orchids at his home. He published eight papers on floral species, and named three varieties of violets after his children. One 1966 paper, published in the New York Botanical Garden Journal was on Apetahia raiateensis, a rare flower found only on the island of Raiatea in French Polynesia. The high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) was less successful, and only two HTGR power reactors were built, both in the United States. The 40 MW Peach Bottom Unit 1 demonstration plant in Pennsylvania operated successfully, but the larger Fort St. Vrain 300 MW unit in Colorado encountered technical problems.

His appointment at the National Science Foundation ended in 1977, and Creutz became director of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu. He took particular interest in the museum's work preparing a two-volume Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawaii, which was published in 1999. He expanded programs for education and outreach, and secured funding for two new buildings.