Lansing Lamont, Milton Academy Class of 1948, an author and journalist best known for his history of the building and testing of the atomic bombs used in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, died on Sept. 3, 2013 in Manhattan. “Lans” Lamont, as he was known at Milton, interviewed the scientists involved in the project as a reporter for Timemagazine. His book, Day of Trinity, was an international bestseller, and stands today as a work that preserves the thoughts and memories of the key scientists, such as Enrico Fermi and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
During the ’60s Lans Lamont worked for Time as a national correspondent out of Washington D.C. and covered the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. He was deputy chief of Time’s London bureau from 1969–1971, and subsequently chief Canadian correspondent, United Nations bureau chief and writer for the magazine’s World Affairs section. While Day of Trinity, Lans Lamont’s most widely read book, stands among seven other “well received” books.
“Biographer of the nuclear dawn” Adam Berstein called Lans in his Washington Postobituary, and Paul Vitello, writing in The New York Times chronicles Lamont’s life as a “Journalist and Historian of Atom Bomb.”
Lansing Lamont served as Milton Academy trustee from 1976 to 1988. Two of his children, Douglas Lamont ’73 and Elisabeth Lamont Wolcott ’74 attended Milton as well as his grandson, Christopher Lamont ’07. Lans was last at Milton just this past June, when he joined classmates for his 65th Reunion.
