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ANS Charter Member Warren Nyer Passes

ANS Charter Member and Fellow Emeritus Warren Nyer passed away on February 4, 2016, in Idaho Falls, ID. He was 94. Nyer joined ANS on January 1, 1955, just weeks after the organization was incorporated. He was also the organizing chairman of the Idaho Section of ANS (1957). 

Warren Nyer was nineteen and a physics student at the University of Chicago when he was hired as a research assistant with the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Although he did not have an undergraduate degree, Nyer worked in the circuit of the Plutonium Project: Chicago, Oak Ridge, Hanford, Los Alamos, and Trinity. He later became a manage­ment consultant to electric utility firms. He was one of 49 scientists, led by Enrico Fermi, present in a converted squash court at the University of Chicago's abandoned Stagg Field on December 2, 1942, when Chicago Pile 1, the world's first nuclear reactor, went critical. He participated in the Atoms for Peace Conferences in Geneva (1958) and was vice chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Safety and Licensing Panel.  He and his family moved to Idaho Falls in November 1951, where Nyer was a physicist with the MTR reactor at the National Reactor Testing Station.  In 1954, he was appointed head of the nuclear safety programs for Phillips Petroleum’s Atomic Energy Division.  The SPERT and LOFT reactor experiments were part of this effort. 

The Nyer family has asked that his memory be honored through donations to the Fairfield Cemetery Association, Box 259, Newman, IL, 61942, or the American Nuclear Society’s Center for Nuclear Science and Technology Information (ANS Center Fund), 555 N. Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL, 60526.

 A service is planned for 2 p.m., Saturday February 20, at Wood Funeral Home, 273 North Ridge, Idaho Falls. 

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