Neutron bomb designer dies

NEUTRON bomb inventor Samuel T Cohen, who in 1958 designed the tactical nuclear weapon intended to kill people but do minimal damage to cities, has died in Los Angeles at 89.

Cohen’s son, Paul Cohen, told the Los Angeles Times and New York Times that his father died of stomach cancer.

Cohen backed the neutron bomb as a more moral alternative to other nuclear weapons.

The neutron bomb used tiny particles that could zip through objects with minimal damage, but kill humans.

The US developed the weapon in the 1980s, and other nations are believed to have possessed them. But the neutron bomb was never widely embraced.

A New York native, Cohen studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and helped build the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.