ALTAMONT — In 1943, the world was at war. Joseph Solomon Levinger was 25 years old and a junior physicist at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago — part of the Manhattan Project — researching the creation of the atomic bomb.

“He was at the epicenter of where this happened, working with people like Enrico Fermi,” said his son, Joseph Levinger. The Met Lab at the University of Chicago researched plutonium, the newly discovered chemical element that would ignite the world’s first nuclear bombs.

On Aug. 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later, another was dropped on Nagasaki. Armistice followed, and ultimately the Japanese surrendered. The war was over but Mr. Levinger “carried this as a burden throughout his adult life,” said his son.

He died peacefully on Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. He was 96.

Mr. Levinger was a decades-long member of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, and served on the Peace Committee for the State of New York. In the 1990s, he took several trips to Guatemala, serving as a member of delegations organized by Peace Brigades International.

As Mr. Levinger lay near death, his son said, he asked that a Friend who had earlier helped him plan a Quaker memorial service be called back. “He wanted to see him again about his involvement with the Manhattan Project,” said his son. Mr. Levinger had stopped eating the week before and was unable to talk.

“My dad could not respond. Hearing is the last to go. David acted on the assumption he could comprehend and tried to tell my dad, ‘It’s OK.’”

Looking back at his father’s long life — as a physics professor, a world traveler, the father of four children, happily married twice — Mr. Levinger said, “He had a lot of contradictions. He was involved in the Manhattan Project but spent most of his life as a peacenik. He was very distant from his children but he said raising his four children was his biggest accomplishment.”

His son went on, “He was a ’50s guy: breadwinner, nose-to-the-grindstone career man. His career was so cerebral. But on his death bed, quite literally, he was asking about my 17-year-old daughter and where she was applying to school. Her birthday is the same as his — November 14 — and he was asking what she wanted for her birthday.

“I said, ‘Dad, you’ve got bigger fish to fry.’ He said, ‘I’ll ask Hedi to do it’ of his 98-year-old wife. I said, ‘Dad, she’s got bigger fish to fry.’”

Joseph Levinger concluded, “My dad was a man of few words … It always seemed to me he had his head in the clouds.”

Joseph Solomon Levinger was born in New York City and raised in Columbus, Ohio by parents who valued judaism and writing. His father, Lee Joseph Levinger, was a Reform rabbi who had more of an intellectual than a spiritual perspective on judaism, according to Mr. Levinger. “He wrote textbooks on judaism.”

His mother, Elma Ehrlich Levinger, wrote over 35 books and also collaborated with her husband on classics like “The Story of the Jew.”

Joseph Solomon Levinger was the youngest in his family. The first-born child, Samuel, was a “young idealist,” Mr. Levinger said. At 18, he joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War and died on the battlefield two years later.

“He wrote an amazing letter to be delivered to his parents only if he passed away in battle,” said Mr. Levinger, noting that the letter was part of his family’s mythology and well-known beyond the family too. From memory, Mr. Levinger paraphrased the heart of the letter, “Don’t mourn for me. I gave my life to a cause much greater.”

“World change is a stern master,” Samuel Levinger wrote in the letter that was delivered to his parents after his death. “It has killed and will kill millions of boys as dear to somebody as I am to you.” He signed his farewell with these words: “Love and revolutionary greetings. Joy to the world. Samuel Levinger.”

“My sister, Laurie, wrote a number of books. One of them is on Sam Levinger, based on his letters to his parents, about his fighting with a deep passion,” said Mr. Levinger.

In birth order, Samuel Levinger was followed by twins Leah and Joseph; Joseph died as a young child. “My grandparents chose to name my dad after their deceased child,” said Mr. Levinger.

Rabbi Levinger spent his final years living with Joseph Levinger’s family. The rabbi traveled by bus to visit his daughter in New York City. “When he took the bus back to Albany, at the bus station, he collapsed in my father’s arms, and died.”

The young Joseph Solomon Levinger was “very interested in math from an early age; he was very precocious,” said his son. “Although his parents were far from wealthy, they put enough together to send him to a private school associated with Ohio State University.” Joseph Levinger and his classmates were “a close-knit group” his son said. Together they wrote a book in high school called “We Were Guinea Pigs,” a reference to the school’s experimental nature.

Mr. Levinger stayed in touch with his schoolmates throughout his long life and attended his 60th class reunion.

Mr. Levinger went on to earn a bachelor of science degree and a master of science degree — both of them in physics at the University of Chicago. He then earned a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University.  While at the University of Chicago, he met Gloria Edwards, and they were married in 1943.

After his work at the Met Lab, Mr. Levinger served as a visiting professor of physics at Cornell University, a physics professor for 10 years at Louisiana State University, and spent most of his career as a physics professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, from 1964 to 1992.

Over the course of his career, he had two sabbaticals abroad, the first in 1957 at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and the second in 1972 at the Orsay branch of the University of Paris.  He also traveled extensively, participating in four physics conferences in the former Soviet Union — in 1967, 1988, 1992, and 1994.

“The community of physicists around the world transcends political divides,” said Joseph Lebinger. “It’s rarified air ... There are probably five people on the planet with the same interests as my dad — two- and three-body problems, and nuclear photo-disintegration effect,” a subject on which he wrote a book.

“Although his career was never far from his mind, Joe took great pride in watching his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren make their way in the world,” his son wrote in a tribute. “A quiet and reserved man, his first wife, Gloria, was often heard to ask, ‘What are you thinking, Old Sage,’ to which he would stir from his reverie, quietly chuckling in his inimitable way.

“Taking the loss of Gloria very hard, he nevertheless found love once again, marrying longtime Altamont resident Hedi McKinley 10 years later at the age of 76, joining her at her house on Leesome Lane in Altamont.”

“We are traveling people,” said Hedi McKinley once as she and her husband set out on one of their far-flung adventures.

“They traveled the world together, from Kenya to Austria to Australia, each inspiring the other to push the boundaries of what those in their mid-90’s were ‘supposed, to be doing,” Joseph Levinger said.

Ms. McKinley and Mr. Levinger had been friends for years since her late husband had also been a physics professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “My dad was very lonely so, maybe a year after Will died, Hedi said, ‘So, I’ve booked a trip to Kenya to see the animals.’ My dad said, ‘Can I come?’ She said, ‘Sure.’ They went. That was the beginning of their romance.”

Joseph Levinger, who has been on an African trip himself, said, “You sleep in a tent with lions and elephants brushing up against the tent at three in the morning.”

Their late-in-life adventure lasted 20 years, ending only with his death.

“Dad really embraced Quakerism at the end of his life,” said his son. His first contact with the faith was during his college years in the 1940s. He began attending the Albany Friends Meeting regularly in 1968, becoming a Convinced Friend in 1987. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he served as a member the Ministry and Council Committee for the Albany Friends Meeting, in addition to serving as Clerk of the Meeting for several years.

Mr. Levinger was also a member of the Meeting’s worship-sharing group in support of lesbian and gay concerns during the period in which the Meeting moved toward the recognition of same-sex marriage. On the statewide level, he served as Clerk of the Disability Concerns Committee for New York State, focusing on making meeting houses more accessible to people with disabilities, as well as working on issues of concern for people who are blind or deaf.

At the end of his life, Mr. Levinger’s family gathered around him. “I’ve never seen someone die before,” said his son. “Ten of us were around him, singing songs and saying we loved him until literally his last breath.”

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Joseph Solomon Levinger is survived by his beloved wife, Hedi McKinley; his four children, Sam Levinger and his wife, Beryl, Laurie Levinger, Louis Levinger and his wife, Jackie Simon, and Joe Levinger and his wife, Lisa; his six grandchildren; his four great-grandchildren; and many admiring friends.

His first beloved wife of 37 years, Gloria Edwards Levinger, died before him as did his siblings, Sam, Leah, and Joseph Levinger, and his parents, Lee and Elma Levinger.

He was laid to rest in New Rural Cemetery, in Rensselaer, New York, next to his beloved first wife, Gloria.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Albany Friends Meeting, 727 Madison Ave, Albany, NY 12208.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer