Technology Expert Later Condemned Worldwide Arms Race in 2 Books
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BOSTON — Bernard J. O’Keefe, who helped develop America’s first nuclear bomb and later spoke out against the dangers of nuclear war, died Thursday. He was 69.
O’Keefe went to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico during World War II to build the firing circuits for the weapons that leveled Nagasaki and Hiroshima and received a presidential citation for his efforts.
O’Keefe joined EG&G; in Wellesley in 1947 and served as the high-technology research and defense consulting company’s chief executive officer from 1965 to 1983. He was chairman of the board from 1972 until 1985.
His company has participated in every nuclear explosion the government has conducted, but O’Keefe condemned the arms race in his books “Nuclear Hostages” and “Shooting Ourselves.”
O’Keefe, who died Thursday, was born in Providence, R.I. He graduated from Catholic University of America in 1941 with a degree in electrical engineering. He attended graduate school at Bowdoin College and advanced radar school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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