fence reactor design, both led by Tuck's teams. He remained at Los Alamos until his retirement in 1972. Earlier in 1972 he had published a review in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of the book Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Frontiers of Public and Private Science by Solly Zuckerman. After his retirement Tuck became a prominent public supporter of research into thermonuclear fusion for power generation. He also became interested in the phenomenon of ball lightning, probably because of the connection between plasmas and their role in fusion power schemes, and in 1980 he appeared in the Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World episode 'Clarke's Cabinet of Curiosities' where he described his experiments at Los Alamos, carried out during lunch breaks, to create ball lightning using a large storage battery of the type then used in submarines. Honours and Service Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 1944 Fellow of the American Physical Society Editor, Review of Plasma Physics and Controlled Thermonuclear Research References "James Leslie Tuck (obituary)," Physics Today, March 1981, pp. 87–88. Dennis C. Fakley, "The British Mission," Los Alamos Science, Winter/Spring 1983, pp. 186–189. Ferenc Szasz, "James L. Tuck: Scientific Polymath and Eternal Optimist of the Atomic West," in The Atomic West, edited by Bruce William Hevly and John M. Findlay. Seattle: University of Washington Press (1998), pp. 136–156. James L. Tuck, "Curriculum Vita and Autobiography," Declassified document from Los Alamos National Laboratory (1974), reproduced with permission. 1910 births 1980 deaths Manhattan Project people English physicists British nuclear physicists Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester Officers of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the American Physical Society