Eighty years ago this fall, officials at Fort Monmouth could have headed off the most notorious spy ring in United States history.
Instead, they let Julius Rosenberg talk his way out of trouble and spawn a network that handed over some of the military’s most precious secrets to the Soviet Union.
That was one of many fascinating insights presented by Stevens Institute of Technology professor Alex Wellerstein, a leading science historian, during a public talk Monday.
The son of poor Russian immigrants, Rosenberg landed a job with Fort Monmouth in 1940 as a quality inspector, making sure contractors were properly making equipment ordered by the the fort’s Signal Corps Laboratory — a crucial hub in the development of radar technology.
