Leon Davidson
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Leon Davidson (October 18, 1922 - January 1, 2007) was one of a handful selected to work on the atomic bomb. He is buried in Hawthorne, New York. He is succeeded by his wife, Doris, his 3 children (Ed, Carole, and Martha), his 2 granddaughters (Leah and Rachel), and his 3 great-grandsons (Alex, Wesley, and Nathan).
Leon was a graduate of Columbia College (BS) and Columbia School of Engineering (MA, PhD), majoring in Chemical Engineering, a career he selected at the age of 13 while a student at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. While a graduate student at the Columbia School of Engineering, he was personally selected by the Dean, John R. Dunning, to join the Manhattan Project, the US atomic bomb development program. After an assignment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, he moved his family to Los Alamos, NM, where he eventually became an engineering design supervisor for one of the atomic weapons then under development. He then accepted assignments at the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Pentagon in Washington before moving into the private sector.
In the mid-1950’s, he joined the Nuclear Development Corporation of America in White Plains, NY, entering the emerging field of computer technology and development. Following stints in management at several large technology companies including Union Carbide, Teleregister, Western Union, General Precision Laboratories, and IBM where he was Manager of Advanced Applications Development, he became an independent consultant, working for both government clients including Oak Ridge National Laboratories and commercial clients including Mini-Computer Systems of Elmsford, NY.
On the side, he formed his own technology consulting and design company (Metroprocessing Corporation of America) to explore and exploit the emerging technology of touch-tone dialing (now used for push-button telephones). His goal was to make Metroprocessing the single source of information on the application of the “twelve button” touch tone telephone to private companies and public agencies.
In the mid-to-late 1950’s, Leon volunteered at the Civil Defense Filter Center in White Plains, helping track and identify aircraft flying over the New York metropolitan area. He devoted much of his free time to the study of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). He convinced a Congressional Committee to force the Air Force to permit him to publish and distribute, in its entirety, the Air Force’s Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14, the primary source book on the Air Force’s findings related to UFO’s.
An avid thinker, Leon spent many happy hours analyzing major national and world events including the Kennedy assassination, questionable Presidential elections, and the Jonestown (Guyana) Massacre.
Leon died in White Plains Hospital on New Year's Day 2007. His ashes are buried in White Plains, New York and his wife moved to Pennsylvania.
Just recently, an unknown autobography of Leon's was found when his family was cleaning out his White PLains apartment. Details on this autobiography will soon be added once his family is finished reading it.
