Harry Charles Kelly (9 October 1908—2 February 1976)[1] was an American physicist best known for his role in Japan in the aftermath of World War II in preserving scientific research not related to weaponry.
He helped found Baird Associates, a medical engineering firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[4] but experienced a traumatic incident in which he was unable to save his brother from drowning.
With the outbreak of World War II, he returned to MIT, where he became part of the Radiation Laboratory (the "Rad Lab"), which played a key role in developing a practical radar system.
After the war Kelly prepared to return to academic life, but instead was recruited as part of the Allied Occupation of Japan, as a science adviser to General Douglas MacArthur.
[5] On November 24, 1945 US soldiers descended on a physics laboratory run by Yoshi Nishina and used dynamite, crowbars and blowtorches to dismantle two operating cyclotrons and sank them in Tokyo Bay.
Asked to vet Nishina by US intelligence officers, Kelly took the file home and made the assessment that “He was an international scholar, respected all over the world.
Although there was a strong push to have it dismantled as a monopoly, Kelly persuaded the powers that be that it was a vital institution for the rehabilitation of Japan in the post-war era.