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Lewis L. Strauss, Former Aec Chairman, Dead at Age 77

January 23, 1974
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Funeral services will be held here on Thursday and a memorial service will be held in Washington on Friday for Lewis L. Strauss, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who died at his farm home in Brandy Station, Va. yesterday. He was 77. The funeral rites will be held at Congregation Emanu-El, the Reform synagogue of which Strauss had been president from 1938 to 1948. He also had been active in the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Theological Seminary and the American Friends of the Alliance Israelite Univeriselle after he retired.

Mr. Strauss was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1946 to 1950 and its chairman from 1953 to 1958. He led the successful battle in the commission for development of the by drogen bomb. A self-taught amateur physicists, he had sought out physicists fleeing from Nazi Germany and learned from them that uranium had been fissioned in Germany, an essential first step toward creating an atomic bomb. He also served as acting Secretary of Commerce and was a partner in the Kuhn Loeb investment firm.

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