THE ADMINISTRATION: Scientists’ Scientist

In the nervous aftermath of Russia’s Sputnik I, the U.S. Government sent out an S O S to U.S. science. Needed was someone to furnish scientific advice to President Eisenhower and to bridge the gap between the scientific and governmental worlds, which had become so interdependent. Top man to answer the call: Dr. James R. Killian Jr., president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was named the President’s Special

Assistant for Science and Technology. Over the next 18 months, able Administrator Killian created a strong liaison between the White House and scientists, kept the President informed of the best scientific thinking, helped chart the course of U.S. space policy. Last week, at 54, fittingly on the very day that the U.S. sent the first living creatures traveling through space and back, Killian resigned to return to his duties at M.I.T. His successor: Russian-born George Bogdan (“K.”) Kistiakowsky, 58, brilliant professor of chemistry at Harvard and every inch a scientists’ scientist.

Flour with a Flourish. The son of a professor of philosophy of law at the University of Moscow, Kistiakowsky (pronounced Kiss-tuh-kof-ski), volunteered for the White Russian army during the Russian civil war, served in the infantry and tank corps. In his two years of service, he almost died of typhus, was caught up by the Red army tide. Escaping, he shot his horse, jumped into the Black Sea and swam to a rescue ship, later made his way to Germany, where he enrolled for study at the University of Berlin in 1921, got his doctorate four years later.

By 1926 he was studying at Princeton on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship and had begun teaching. He became a U.S. citizen, settled down at Harvard in 1930 to teach and to do research work on the origins of chemical reactions. As chief of the explosives division of the National Defense Research Committee in World War II, he organized and ran a 600-man explosives laboratory in Bruceton, Pa. Once Kistiakowsky got a rush assignment from the OSS: the allies needed an explosive that could be used for sabotage work in Europe and the Far East; it had to be easy to carry, innocent in appearance. Kistiakowsky’s imaginative product was an explosive that looked like flour. Dubbed “Aunt Jemima,” the powder could be transported as flour or dough, even baked and carried around in cake and cookie form. To prove that it was not toxic, K. assembled skeptical military officials, baked his “Aunt Jemima,” finished with a flourish by eating one of his small cakes.

Bombs & Stumps. Kistiakowsky’s biggest job came in 1944, when he went to Los Alamos as a key man on the Manhattan Project. His assignment was to provide the explosive power for triggering the first atomic bomb, assemble the bomb so that it would go off. On the eve of the first test at Alamogordo, Kistiakowsky, another scientist and a military police officer with a submachine gun guarded the bomb throughout the night.

Since the war, lanky (6 ft. 3 in.), witty George Kistiakowsky has sandwiched a series of special defense jobs between his experimental work and teaching duties at Harvard. He lives with his wife, Nebraska-born Irma Shuler, in Lincoln, Mass., likes to ski, takes his Scotch with water. When Lincoln’s town fathers refused Explosives Expert Kistiakowsky a permit to dynamite some stumps on his acreage, he flashed the Manhattan Project Medal for Merit citation awarded him by President Truman, got a green light—and blew the stumps skyhigh.

As Ike’s new adviser, Scientists’ Scientist Kistiakowsky can be expected to take up where James Killian left off. He should be helped by a high sense of mission. Says one of George Kistiakowsky’s closest friends: “His first interest is in science, and to give up [lab work] for a while is very hard for him. He does think scientists have a very heavy responsibility to the nation, and I think that’s been the overriding fact with him.”