Born in Russia in 1900, he was one of the scientists at Los Alamos who had experienced combat. During the Russian Revolution he fought in the infantry and the tank corp of the White Army. After the Bolsheviks assumed power in Russia, Kistiakowsky fled to Germany. There he studied chemistry at the University of Berlin, receiving his Ph. D. in 1925. Upon moving to the United States, he joined the faculty at Harvard.
Kistiakowsky joined the Manhattan Project in late January 1944. He had been studying explosives for the National Defense Research
