Following the Soviet Union 's successful nuclear test in August 1949 , the U.S. was considering a crash course to develop a hydrogen bomb . The AEC 's nine-member General Advisory Committee , chaired by J. Robert Oppenheimer , recommended unanimously against such a course , and Smyth was one of three of the five AEC commissioners to agree . Smyth urged Truman to endorse international control of nuclear weapons , but Truman decided instead to authorize a hydrogen bomb program . In his autobiography , Smyth 's Princeton colleague John Archibald Wheeler recalled that Smyth recruited him to the Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb project and expressed support for the project in response to the Soviet test
Ivy Mike
Ivy Mike
Henry DeWolf Smyth