In the spring of 1943, Hans Bethe, a theoretical physicist and professor at Cornell University, left Ithaca, New York, for a classified government site in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Once there, he led the theoretical division of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. Bethe was just one of dozens of academics pulled from elite American research universities into wartime service, applying their intellectual training to solve critical national security challenges. When the war ended,