Eugene Wigner

Eugene Wigner was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for his work on the theory of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles. During the Manhattan Project he led a team responsible for designing nuclear reactors to convert uranium into weapons grade plutonium, work carried out while reactors still existed only on paper and none had yet gone critical. In 1946 he became director of research and development at the Clinton Laboratory, now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, before frustration with bureaucratic interference from the Atomic Energy Commission led him back to Princeton. He continued to serve the Atomic Energy Commission afterward, sitting on its influential General Advisory Committee from 1952 to 1957 and again from 1959 to 1964.