The Bradbury Science Museum is located in Los Alamos,
New Mexico. It is named for Norris Bradbury, the
second director of Los Alamos National Laboratory (actually named Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory at the time), after J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The museum is an interesting mix of history, modern technology, and a little bit of propaganda. It is divided into several galleries. I find the most interesting to be the historical gallery, which traces the development of the bomb from the 1930's up through (if I remember correctly) the test ban treaty of 1963. It features life-size statues of J. Robert Oppenheimer and
General Leslie Groves, a facsimile of the letter written
by Albert Einstein to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a
piece of a dismantled Soviet nuclear missile, given to the Lab by Russia.
The museum also showcases some of the Lab's research
endeavors, including genetic research and, of course,
nuclear weapons development. There is a replica of the
Little Boy, complete with a sign saying "Please do not sit on Little Boy" to dissuade the Slim Pickens wannabes. There is also a Cray-1 on display, next to a Sparc-10 with roughly the same computing power in one one-hundredth the volume.
One of the more fascinating things in the museum is an
alcove devoted to community opinions. It usually rotates between those who believe the U.S. was justified in dropping the bomb on Japan, and those who don't. Depending upon who is occupying the exhibit at the time, it is filled with commentary on the prospect of one million Allied casualties from an invasion of Japan, or pictures of burned and disfigured citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The museum is located at 15th and Central in downtown
Los Alamos, next to the Otowi Bookstore and a Subway.
| 
