In 1942 , with Bowman ’s strong encouragement , Hopkins founded a facility that became the Applied Physics Laboratory , where scientists perfected the Proximity fuze , a device that could explode an artillery shell near a target , rather than on contact or in a place where the target was predicted to be . This fuze aided greatly in repelling Japanese '' kamikaze '' attacks late in the war , and in the Ardennes region of Europe during the 1944 Battle of the Bulge . As a State Department adviser , Bowman participated in the Dumbarton Oaks Conference and the San Francisco Conference , playing a role in the foundation of the United Nations
San Francisco Conference
United Nations Conference on International Organization
Isaiah Bowman