Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer-winning scholar, dead at 84

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Martin J. Sherwin, a leading scholar of atomic weapons who challenged support for the U.S. bombing of Japan, has died at age 84. Sherwin was best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the pioneering physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Entitled “American Prometheus,” the book was widely praised as a comprehensive and invaluable study of the so-called “father of the atomic bomb.” Sherwin was also a popular teacher and lecturer who taught at Princeton University, George Mason University and Tufts University, where he founded the Nuclear Age History Center. Sherwin had been battling lung cancer and his friend said he died Wednesday at his home in Washington, D.C.