John Aristotle Phillips
Overview
North Haven, Connecticut
North Haven is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut on the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut.North Haven is less than ten miles from downtown New Haven and Yale University. It is near Sleeping Giant State Park and home the Quinnipiac University School of Health Sciences, the School of Nursing,...
In 1976, while attending Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
as a junior
Junior (education)
"Junior" is a term used in the United States to describe a student in their 3rd year of study . A Junior is considered an upperclassman...
undergraduate, he designed a nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
using publicly-available books and papers. In February 1977, several months after the story first went public, Phillips was contacted by a Pakistani
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
official trying to purchase his bomb design, an incident addressed on the Senate floor by William Proxmire
William Proxmire
Edward William Proxmire was an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1957 to 1989.-Personal life:...
and Charles Percy
Charles H. Percy
Charles Harting "Chuck" Percy was president of the Bell & Howell Corporation from 1949 to 1964. He was elected United States Senator from Illinois in 1966, re-elected through his term ending in 1985; he concentrated on business and foreign relations...
.
