This Tycoon's Secret Radar Lab Helped Win WWII

Alfred Lee Loomis in his Tower House lab, Tuxedo Park, NY. Credit: Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives, image # SIA2008-5428 Scientists and engineers who worked for MIT's Radiation Laboratory had a saying about World War II: The atomic bomb may have ended the war, but radar won it. A new PBS documentary makes the case for that bold statement by telling the story of Alfred Lee Loomis, a founder of the Radiation Lab and a millionaire Wall Street tycoon who directed the U.S. government's wartime effort to develop radar technologies into effective weapons. But even before the war, Loomis had built up his scientific credentials by inviting the best U.S. and foreign scientists to visit his private science laboratory in a renovated mansion that famed physicist Albert Einstein dubbed a "palace of science." The wartime story of Loomis reflects the importance of scientific community and international cooperation rather than any ...