Vigil brothers, deputy leaders of two LANL weapons divisions, are fourth generation at Los Alamos
Juan-Antonio and Francisco Vigil are deputy division leaders in the Lab's Weapons Physics directorate.
LOS ALAMOS - Brothers Juan-Antonio and Francisco Vigil are deputy division leaders in the Weapons Physics associate directorate at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and their family's ties to the Lab reach back to the Manhattan Project, according to a Lab profile posted Oct. 26.
Juan-Antonio holds a management role in the Dynamic Experiments division, which runs large outdoor hydrodynamic experiments. Francisco serves the Integrated Weapons Experiments division, which carries out experiments at the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility and fields high-explosive experiments, including subcritical experiments, the Lab said.
Their father, Duane Vigil, recently retired as a plutonium engineer, and their mother, Dollie Vigil, was a property manager in Personnel. Both grandfathers, Fidel Alarid and Rudy Vigil, came to the Lab after Navy service. Their great-grandfather, the first Juan-Antonio Vigil, worked as a laborer for a Los Alamos contractor during World War II for 50 cents an hour, the profile says.
An ancestor, Ramon Vigil, bought more than 30,000 acres on the Pajarito Plateau in the 1800s and sold the land before the federal government acquired it for the Lab.
"Our divisions have been called upon to increase experiment cadence, agility and ingenuity," Juan-Antonio said in the profile.