Departures of note

In 1955, Frederic de Hoffmann was recruited by John Jay Hopkins to found General Atomics and serve as its first president, with the purpose of manufacturing nuclear reactors for energy production and selling them on the open market. During the late 1950s, he organized Project Orion, a plan for a spaceship to be propelled by nuclear bombs. He also helped found the University of California, San Diego.

Born in Vienna, Austria, de Hoffmann came to the United States in 1941 and graduated from Harvard University in 1945, later earning a master's in 1947 and a doctorate in 1948 under Julian Schwinger. Before graduating, he was sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1944, where he assisted Edward Teller in the development of the hydrogen bomb. After leaving Los Alamos, he collaborated with Hans Bethe and Silvan Schweber on a textbook called Mesons and Fields and became chairman of the Committee of Senior Reviewers of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1970, de Hoffmann joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, serving as its president for 18 years and also as chairman and chief executive officer of the Salk Institute Biotechnology-Industry Associates Inc. When he retired in 1988, he was named the institute's president emeritus. He died in 1989 of AIDS, which he contracted in 1984 from an infected blood transfusion received during surgery.