Mark Muir Mills

Who was Mark Muir Mills?

Mark Muir Mills was an American nuclear physicist and a developer of atomic bombs.

He was born in Estes Park, Colorado to Enoch and Ethel Mills. Prior to college he attended Estes Park High School and then moved to Ft. Lauderdale High School, Florida. He received his B.S. from the California Institute of Technology in 1940. During World War II, he served as a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, heading up the solid propellant section. He was also a physics instructor and lectured for the aeronautics department at Caltech.

It was during the war in 1942 that he married Pauline Riedeburg. He completed his Ph.D. in physics from Caltech in 1948.

Following his graduation he started working at North American Aviation, performing theoretical work in their atomic energy research department. He and his colleagues made valuable contributions in the field of nuclear reactor technology. In 1951 he became technical director at Project SQUID at Princeton University, where basic research was performed in aircraft propulsion. In 1952 he returned to his work in reactor design at North American.