"Where Does the Name MesaFive
Come From?"

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During World War II the Manhattan Project was conceived to invent and construct the first atomic bomb.  The project involved tens of thousands of people across many locations, but the core of the work was done by a large group of scientists working in what would become known as Los Alamos, New Mexico.  

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Throughout the project the group ran into new, seemingly insurmountable problems and frequently concluded "this won't ever work...we're done."  The leaders would regularly turn to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who headed the Manhattan Project, to brainstorm solutions to the daily challenges they faced.  Oppenheimer had a unique ability to understand complex problems in a wide variety of fields, to wade through a wealth of data and research and focus on the most relevant, and to ask the right questions so that they considered issues in new or different ways.  Perhaps most importantly he helped others to self-realize solutions rather than just give them the answers.  

 

Oppenheimer loved the hills around Los Alamos, so when someone wanted to talk he would often take them for a walk.  There was a mesa nearby they would regularly walk around but it didn’t have a name, so some of the scientists referred to it as "Mesa Five," the place they would go to for solutions.