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The remarkable life and astonishing times of Dwight Smith Young

Down at the Little White School Museum here in Oswego, we have the audio tape and transcript of an interview with Dick Young that was done by an unfortunately anonymous high school student back in …

Because he, too, was one of the polymaths the Young family seems to produce on a regular basis, he apparently absorbed atomic theory through osmosis and actually did become a nuclear physicist, publishing a number of papers and, yes, even developing the first-known breeder reactor as a testbed. At the demand of Gen. Leslie Groves, the head of the nation’s nuclear program, Dr. Louis Slotin, and a team of scientists and technologists were attempting to accurately measure the critical mass of two hemispheres of fissionable uranium held apart with wooden shims. In declining health, probably due in part to the stress on his body caused by that nuclear accident a couple decades before, he came back north to briefly live with his son, John, before dying on Christmas Eve, 1975, the end of a remarkable life.

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