In 1951 Wheeler obtained permission from Bradbury to set up a branch office of the Los Alamos laboratory at Princeton , known as Project Matterhorn , which had two parts . Matterhorn S ( for stellarator , another name coined by Wheeler ) , under Lyman Spitzer , investigated nuclear fusion as a power source . Matterhorn B ( for bomb ) , under Wheeler , engaged in nuclear weapons research . Senior scientists remained uninterested and aloof from the project , so he staffed it with young graduate and post-doctoral students . In January 1953 he was involved in a security breach when he lost a highly classified paper on lithium-6 and the hydrogen bomb design during an overnight train trip . This resulted in Wheeler being given an official reprimand . Matterhorn B 's efforts were crowned by the success of the Ivy Mike nuclear test at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific , on November 1 , 1953 , which Wheeler witnessed . The yield of the Ivy Mike " Sausage " device was reckoned at , about 30 percent higher than Matterhorn B had estimated . Matterhorn B was discontinued , but Matterhorn S endures as the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Ivy Mike
Ivy Mike
John Archibald Wheeler