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Abraham Zarem, one of the last surviving Manhattan Project scientists, dies at 106
(JTA) — Abraham Zarem was 28 when he joined the Manhattan Project, the vast U.S. government effort to develop the atom bomb.
Engineers like him gathered in secret laboratories in New Mexico, California, New York City and elsewhere to provide the practical know-how the theorists lacked.
“‘They were geniuses, but didn’t know how to build a f—king thing,’” Zarem recalled, according to his longtime rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, David Wolpe.
Zaum, who went on to a distinguished career in technology, business development and leadership management training, died March 8 in Los Angeles. He was 106, and one of the last surviving members of the army of scientists, technicians, bureaucrats and clerks who helped build the weapon that would force Japan’s surrender in World War II and usher in the Atomic Age.
After the war, Zarem joined the staff of the United States Naval Ordnance Test Station at Pasadena, where as head of the electrical section of the physical research division he developed a high-speed camera used to study intense light sources and other phenomena. Popular Mechanics called the Zarem camera — 25,000 times faster than any movie camera then available — a “miracle.”
In 1963, Zarem served as senior vice president of Xerox, leaving in 1970 to launch a consulting business. He returned to Xerox as founder and CEO of its Xerox Development Corporation in 1975. He later served as founder and managing director of Frontier Associates, a technology consultancy.
Born in Chicago on March 7, 1917, Zarem was valedictorian of his undergraduate class at the Armour Institute of Technology (now the Illinois Institute of Technology), and earned his doctorate on the physical properties of the electric spark at the California Institute of Technology. He headed the Stanford University Research Institute in Los Angeles while still in his 30s.
Later he served as distinguished senior advisor for Neuroscience Technology Transfer for the UCLA Brain Research Institute and a member of the Urology Advisory Board of the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. Additionally, he served as distinguished visiting executive in Science and Technology for Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
One of Zarem’s companies, Electro-Optical Systems, developed the “world’s first practical ion engine” — an experimental high-energy thruster for spacecraft. It now resides in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
Zarem was also a regular at Temple Sinai, where Wolpe said Zarem mentored him as a young rabbi. Zarem and his wife Esther were generous contributors to the congregation; Wolpe remembered Zarem chanting from the book of Jonah on Yom Kippur when he was 99.
“Abe Zarem was a brilliant, buoyant, passionate, pious and philanthropic person,” Wolpe told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this week. “He had a central role in some of the key scientific events of human history — the atomic bomb, the moon landing — and yet took an interest in everyone lucky enough to meet him. Abe was truly yachid b’mino — unique in his time. He will be greatly missed.”
Unlike with some of his collaborators on the Manhattan Project, there is no public record of Zarem grappling publicly with the moral implications of the weapon he helped develop. Years after their war work at Caltech, a man who worked under Zarem as a lab assistant said he felt no guilt, because without the detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he told a local newspaper, “We would have lost 500,000 Americans in the invasion of Japan.”
But Zarem did go on the record in 1952 on a different topic, in advice he shared with a labor and management magazine: “Keep your feet warm, and your head cool. And watch out for the hotheads with cold feet.”
His survivors include his children, Janet, David and Mark.
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The post Abraham Zarem, one of the last surviving Manhattan Project scientists, dies at 106 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Suspect at Large in Brown University Shooting that Killed at Least Two, Injured Eight
Police vehicles stand near the site of a mass shooting reported by authorities at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S., December 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Taylor Coester
Police in Rhode Island were searching for a suspect in a shooting at Brown University in Providence in which two people died and eight were critically wounded at the Ivy League school, officials said.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told a news conference that police were still searching for the shooter, who struck at Brown’s Barus & Holley engineering building, where exams were taking place at the time. Officials said police were looking for a male dressed in black and were scouring local video cameras in the area for footage to get a better description of the suspect.
Smiley said officials could not yet disclose details about the victims, including whether they were students. He lamented the shooting.
“We are a week and a half away from Christmas. And two people died today and another eight are in the hospital,” he said. “So please pray for those families.”
Brown is on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island‘s state capital. The university has hundreds of buildings, including lecture halls, laboratories and dormitories.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had been briefed on the situation, which he called “terrible.”
“All we can do right now is pray for the victims and for those that were very badly hurt.”
Compared to many countries, mass shootings in schools, workplaces, and places of worship are more common in the US, which has some of the most permissive gun laws in the developed world. The Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as any incident in which four or more victims have been shot, has counted 389 of them this year in the US.
Last year the US had more than 500 mass shootings, according to the archive.
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Rights Groups Condemn Re-Arrest of Nobel Laureate Mohammadi in Iran
Taghi Ramahi, husband of Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, poses with an undated photo of himself and his wife, during an interview at his home in Paris, France, October 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
International human rights groups have condemned the re-arrest of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi in Iran, with the Nobel committee calling on Iranian authorities to immediately clarify her whereabouts.
Mohammadi’s French lawyer, Chirine Ardakani, said on X that the human rights activist was arrested on Friday after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi at his memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar told reporters on Saturday that Mohammadi was among 39 people arrested after the ceremony.
Hematifar said she and Alikordi’s brother had made provocative remarks at the event and encouraged those present “to chant ‘norm‑breaking’ slogans” and disturb the peace, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The prosecutor said Mashhad’s chief of police and another officer received knife wounds when trying to manage the scene.
CALLS FOR RELEASE
The Norwegian Nobel Committee called on Iranian authorities “to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions.”
The European Union also called for Mohammadi’s release. “The EU urges Iranian authorities to release Ms Mohammadi, taking also into account her fragile health condition, as well as all those unjustly arrested in the exercise of their freedom of expression,” an EU spokesperson said on Saturday.
A video purportedly showing Mohammadi, 53, without the mandatory veil, standing on a car with a microphone and chanting “Long Live Iran” in front of a crowd, has gone viral on social media.
Ardakani said Mohammadi was beaten before her arrest.
Reporters Without Borders said four journalists and other participants were also arrested at the memorial for human rights lawyer Alikordi, who was found dead in his office on December 5.
Authorities gave the cause of his death as a heart attack, but rights groups have called for an investigation into his death.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the crowd also chanted “death to the dictator,” a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as: “We fight, we die, we accept no humiliation.”
Mohammadi, who received the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, has spent more than 10 years of her life in prison, most recently from November 2021 when she was charged with “propaganda against the state,” “acting against national security,” and membership of “illegal organizations.”
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, said on Saturday that the opposition’s campaign in Venezuela was akin to that taking place in Iran.
“In Oslo this week, the world honored the power of conscience. I said to the ‘citizens of the world’ that our struggle is a long march toward freedom. That march is not Venezuelan alone. It is Iranian, it is universal,” she said on X on Saturday.
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Pete Hegseth Pledges Retribution After Islamist Gunmen in Syria Kills 2 US Soldiers and Civilian, Injuring 3
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on US President Donald Trump’s budget request for the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
i24 News – Two US Army soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in an Islamic State attack on Saturday in Palmyra, Syria, where they were supporting counterterrorism operations, the Pentagon said.
Three others were wounded, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the attacker was killed by partner forces.
The Syrian Interior Ministry said that shooter in the deadly attack in Palmyra was a “member of the Syrian security forces who was influence by extremist ideology.”
President Donald Trump posted that “We mourn the loss of three Great American Patriots in Syria, two soldiers, and one Civilian Interpreter. Likewise, we pray for the three injured soldiers who, it has just been confirmed, are doing well.”
“This was an ISIS attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them. The President of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is extremely angry and disturbed by this attack. There will be very serious retaliation. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”