John Robert Huizenga (April 21, 1921 – January 25, 2014) was an American physicist who helped build the first atomic bomb and who also debunked University of Utah scientists' claim of achieving cold fusion. Early life and education John Robert Huizenga was born on a farm near Fulton, Illinois, the son of Henry and Josie (Brands) Huizenga. He attended Erie High School and Morrison High School, graduating from the latter in 1940. He continued his education at Calvin College in Michigan, from which he received a bachelor's degree in 1944. He would maintain his ties to Calvin later in life, for example collaborating on fundamental nuclear research with his Calvin friend Roger Griffioen, who had gone on to become a professor there. Calvin would name him one of the college's Distinguished Alumni in 1975. Along with other Calvin students, he was recruited after graduation to work for the Manhattan Project, at the Project's site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, that was dedicated to the production of highly enriched uranium. Following his time in Oak Ridge, he continued his education at the University of Illinois, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy degree in physical chemistry in 1949. On completing his studies he held joint appointments at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. Professional career During World War II, Huizenga supervised teams at the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tenn., involved in enriching uranium used in the atomic weapon dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945. During his Argonne years, as a result of examining debris from the "Ivy Mike" nuclear test in 1952, Huizenga was part of the team that added two new synthetic chemical elements, einsteinium and fermium, to the periodic table. Huizenga and his colleagues were at first unable to publish papers on their discoveries in the open literature, because of classification concerns relating to the nuclear test, but these concerns were eventually resolved and the team was able to publish in Physical Review and thus claim priority for their discovery. During his Argonne years he was one of the founders of the Gordon Research Conferences on nuclear chemistry, serving as chairman of the nuclear chemistry Gordon Conference in 1958. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964 and took a sabbatical from Argonne to further his studies as a visiting professor at the University of Paris for the 1964-1965 academic year. In 1967, he became a professor of chemistry and