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Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Richard Garwin obituary
The Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi called his student Richard Garwin 'the only true genius I've ever met'. Garwin, who has died aged 97, is perhaps the most influential 20th-century scientist that you have never heard of, because he produced much of his work under the constraints of national or commercial secrecy. During 40 years working at IBM on an endless stream of research projects, he was granted 47 patents, in diverse areas including magnetic resonance imaging, high-speed laser printers and touch-screen monitors. Garwin, a polymath who was adviser to six US presidents, wrote papers on space weapons, pandemics, radioactive waste disposal, catastrophic risks and nuclear disarmament. Throughout much of that time, a greater secret remained: in 1951, aged 23, he had designed the world's first hydrogen bomb. Ten years earlier, Fermi had had the insight that an atomic bomb explosion would create extraordinarily high pressures and temperatures like those in the heart of the sun. This would be hot enough to ignite fusion of hydrogen atoms, the dynamical motor that releases solar energy, with the potential to make an explosion of unlimited power. This is known as a thermonuclear explosion, reflecting the high temperature, in contrast to an atomic bomb, which starts at room temperature. Detonation of the atomic bomb in 1945 gave the proof of the first part of this concept, but in secret lectures at the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico that summer, Fermi admitted that although an exploding atomic bomb could act as the spark that ignites hydrogen fuel, he could find no way of keeping the material alight. In 1949, the USSR exploded its first atomic bomb and within months President Harry S Truman announced that the US would develop 'the so-called hydrogen or superbomb'. In the same year, Garwin graduated from the University of Chicago with a doctorate in physics and became an instructor in the physics department. Fermi invited him to join Los Alamos as a summer consultant, to help to realise Truman's goal. Early in 1951 Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam made the theoretical breakthrough: a bomb consisting of two physically separated parts in a cylindrical casing. One component was an atom bomb whose explosion would emit both atomic debris and electromagnetic radiation. The radiation would move at the speed of light and flood the interior with rays that would compress the second component containing the hydrogen fuel. The impact of the debris an instant later would complete the ignition. This one-two attack on the hydrogen fuel was the theoretical idea that Teller asked Garwin to develop. Garwin turned their rough idea into a detailed design that remains top secret even today. The device, codenamed Ivy Mike, was assembled on the tiny island of Elugelab in the Enewatak Atoll of the Marshall Islands in the south Pacific. Weighing 80 tonnes and three storeys high, it looked more like an industrial site than a bomb. It was undeliverable by an aeroplane but designed solely to prove the concept. On 1 November 1952, the explosion, which was 700 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima or Nagasakai, instantly wiped Elugelab from the face of the earth and vaporised 80m tonnes of coral. In their place was a crater a mile across into which the waters of the Pacific Ocean poured. The mushroom cloud reached 80,000ft in 2 minutes and continued to rise until it was four times higher than Mount Everest, stretching 60 miles across. The core was 30 times hotter than the heart of the sun, the fireball 3 miles wide. The sky shone like a red-hot furnace. For several minutes, many observers feared that the test was out of hand and that the whole atmosphere would ignite. None of the news reports mentioned Garwin's name; he was a scientific unknown, a junior faculty member at the University of Chicago. A month later he joined the International Business Machines Corporation, IBM, in Yorktown Heights, New York. The post included a faculty appointment at Columbia, which gave him considerable freedom to pursue his research interests and to continue as a government consultant at Los Alamos and, increasingly, in Washington. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, the elder son of Leona (nee Schwartz), a legal secretary, and Robert Garwin, a teacher of electronics at a technical high school by day and a projectionist at a cinema at night, Dick was a prodigy; by the age of five he was repairing family appliances. After attending public schools in Cleveland, in 1944 he entered Case Western Reserve University. In 1947, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics and married Lois Levy; the couple moved to Chicago, where Garwin was tutored by Fermi. He earned a master's degree in 1948 and a doctorate, aged 21, in 1949. In his doctoral exams he scored the highest marks ever recorded in the university. In addition to his applied science research for IBM, he worked for decades on ways of observing gravitational waves, ripples in space-time predicted by Albert Einstein. His detectors successfully observed the ripples in 2015. This has opened a new window on the universe, in revealing the dynamics of black holes. Throughout his career he continued to advise the US government on national defence issues. This included prioritising targets in the Soviet Union, warfare involving nuclear-armed submarines, and satellite reconnaissance and communication systems. A strong supporter of reducing nuclear arsenals, he advised the US president Jimmy Carter during negotiations with the Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev on the 1979 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. He believed that the US should nonetheless maintain a strategic balance of nuclear power with the Soviet Union and opposed policies that could upset that: 'Moscow is more interested in live Russians than dead Americans.' After retiring from the University of Chicago in 1993, he chaired the State Department's arms control and non-proliferation advisory board until 2001. In 2002 he was awarded the National Medal of Science, the US's highest scientific award, and in 2016 the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. In presenting the award, Barack Obama remarked that Garwin 'never met a problem he didn't want to solve'. Lois died in 2018. Garwin is survived by two sons and a daughter, five grandchildren and a great-grandchild. • Richard Lawrence Garwin, physicist, born 19 April 1928; died 13 May 2025
NDTV
21-05-2025
- Science
- NDTV
He Made World's First Hydrogen Bomb But Kept It A Secret For 50 Years
Richard L Garwin, the creator of America's hydrogen bomb, died on May 13 at his home in Scarsdale, New York. He was 97. Over the course of his seven-decade career, Mr Garwin laid the groundwork for insights into the structure of the universe. He also helped in the development of several medical and computer marvels. But his contribution to the one invention that changed the course of history remained a secret for almost 50 years. At the age of 23, he designed the world's first hydrogen bomb. Mr Garwin, who was then a professor at the University of Chicago and just a summer consultant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, used physicist Edward Teller and mathematician Stanislaw Ulam's concepts to design the hydrogen bomb in 1951-1952. The experimental device, code-named Ivy Mike, was successfully tested on the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952. Mr Garwin's contribution to the creation of the first hydrogen bomb was a well-kept secret for decades. Outside a select group of government, military, and intelligence officials, no one knew about his role in the experiment due to the secrecy surrounding the project. Edward Teller, whose name had long been associated with the bomb, first credited Mr Garwin in a 1981 taped statement, acknowledging his crucial role in the invention. "The shot was fired almost precisely according to Garwin's design," Mr Teller said, as per The NY Times. The recording was lost to history for 22 years. The late acknowledgement received little attention, and Mr Garwin remained unknown to the public for a long time. In an interview with Esquire magazine in 1984, Mr Garwin opened up about getting little to no recognition for his work on the hydrogen bomb. He said, "I never felt that building the hydrogen bomb was the most important thing in the world, or even in my life at the time." This changed in April 2001 when George A Keyworth II, Mr Teller's friend, provided the transcript of the tape recording to The New York Times. Even though Teller had earlier recognised the young physicist's contribution, such references were lost in specialised writings and meetings. Suddenly, fifty years after the event, Mr Garwin gained wide public recognition as the creator of the H-bomb. Meanwhile, after his success on the hydrogen bomb project, Mr Garwin accepted a job at the International Business Machines Corporation, where he worked for four decades, until his retirement. In between this, Mr Garwin remained a government consultant, offering advice on matters pertaining to national defence. The physicist was an adviser to several American Presidents, such as Dwight D Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson, Richard M Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Richard L Garwin's many honours include the 2002 National Medal of Science, the nation's highest award for accomplishments in science and engineering, given by US President George W Bush and the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award, given by President Barack Obama.
Boston Globe
15-05-2025
- Science
- Boston Globe
Richard L. Garwin, a creator of the hydrogen bomb, dies at 97
While his mentor, Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, called him 'the only true genius I have ever met,' Dr. Garwin was not the father of the hydrogen bomb. Hungarian-born physicist Edward Teller and Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, who developed theories for a bomb, may have greater claims to that sobriquet. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up In 1951-52, however, Dr. Garwin, at the time an instructor at the University of Chicago and just a summer consultant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, designed the actual bomb, using the Teller-Ulam ideas. An experimental device code-named Ivy Mike, it was shipped to the Western Pacific and tested on an atoll in the Marshall Islands. Advertisement Intended only to prove the fusion concept, the device did not even resemble a bomb. It weighed 82 tons, was undeliverable by airplane, and looked like a gigantic thermos bottle. Soviet scientists, who did not test a comparable device until 1955, derisively called it a thermonuclear installation. Advertisement But at the Enewetak Atoll on Nov. 1, 1952, it spoke: An all-but-unimaginable fusion of atoms set off a vast, instant flash of blinding light, soundless to distant observers, and a fireball 2 miles wide with a force 700 times greater than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. Its mushroom cloud soared 25 miles and expanded to 100 miles across. Because secrecy shrouded the development of America's thermonuclear weapons programs, Dr. Garwin's role in creating the first hydrogen bomb was virtually unknown for decades outside a small circle of government defense and intelligence officials. It was Teller, whose name had long been associated with the bomb, who first publicly credited him. 'The shot was fired almost precisely according to Garwin's design,' Teller said in a 1981 statement that acknowledged the crucial role of the young prodigy. Still, that belated recognition got little notice. Compared with later thermonuclear weapons, Dr. Garwin's bomb was crude. Its raw power nonetheless recalled films of the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico in 1945, and the appalled reaction of its creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer, reflecting upon the sacred Hindu text of the Bhagavad Gita: 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' For Dr. Garwin, it was something less. 'I never felt that building the hydrogen bomb was the most important thing in the world, or even in my life at the time,' he told Esquire magazine in 1984. Asked about any feelings of guilt, he said: 'I think it would be a better world if the hydrogen bomb had never existed. But I knew the bombs would be used for deterrence.' Advertisement Although the first hydrogen bomb was constructed to his specifications, Dr. Garwin was not present to witness its detonation at Enewetak. 'I've never seen a nuclear explosion,' he said in an interview for this obituary in 2018. 'I didn't want to take the time.' After his success on the hydrogen bomb project, he said, he found himself at a crossroads in 1952. He could return to the University of Chicago, where he had earned his doctorate under Fermi and was now an assistant professor, with the promise of life at one of the nation's most prestigious academic institutions. Or he could accept a far more flexible job at the International Business Machines Corp. It offered a faculty appointment and use of the Thomas J. Watson Laboratory at Columbia University, with wide freedom to pursue his research interests. It would also let him continue to work as a government consultant at Los Alamos and in Washington. He chose the IBM deal, and it lasted for four decades, until his retirement. For IBM, Dr. Garwin worked on a stream of pure and applied research projects that yielded an astonishing array of patents, scientific papers, and technological advances in computers, communications, and medicine. His work was crucial in developing magnetic resonance imaging, high-speed laser printers, and later touch-screen monitors. A dedicated maverick, Dr. Garwin worked hard for decades to advance the hunt for gravitational waves -- ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein had predicted. In 2015, the costly detectors he backed were able to successfully observe the ripples, opening a new window on the universe. Meantime, Dr. Garwin continued to work for the government, consulting on national defense issues. As an expert on weapons of mass destruction, he helped select priority Soviet targets and led studies on land, sea, and air warfare involving nuclear-armed submarines, military and civilian aircraft, and satellite reconnaissance and communication systems. Much of his work continued to be secret, and he remained largely unknown to the public. Advertisement He became an adviser to presidents including Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. He also became known as a voice against President Reagan's proposals for a space-based missile system, popularly called Star Wars, to defend the nation against nuclear attack. It was never built. One of Dr. Garwin's celebrated battles had nothing to do with national defense. In 1970, as a member of Nixon's science advisory board, he ran afoul of the president's support for development of the supersonic transport plane. He concluded that the SST would be expensive, noisy, bad for the environment, and a commercial dud. Congress dropped its funding. Britain and France subsidized the development of their own SST, the Concorde, but Dr. Garwin's predictions were largely correct, and interest faded. A small, professorial man with thinning flyaway hair and a gentle voice more suited to college lectures than a congressional hot seat, Dr. Garwin became an almost legendary figure within the defense establishment, giving speeches, writing articles, and testifying before lawmakers on what he called misguided Pentagon choices. Some of his feuds with the military were bitter and long-running. They included fights over the B1 bomber, the Trident nuclear submarine, and the MX missile system, a network of mobile, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles that were among the most lethal weapons in history. All eventually joined America's vast arsenal. Advertisement While Dr. Garwin was frustrated by such setbacks, he pressed ahead. His core message was that America should maintain a strategic balance of nuclear power with the Soviet Union. He opposed any weapon or policy that threatened to upset that balance, because, he said, it kept the Russians in check. He liked to say that Moscow was more interested in live Russians than dead Americans. Dr. Garwin supported reductions of nuclear arsenals, including the 1979 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), negotiated by Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet premier. But Dr. Garwin insisted that mutually assured destruction was the key to keeping the peace. In 2021, he joined 700 scientists and engineers, including 21 Nobel laureates, who signed an appeal asking President Biden to pledge that the United States would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. Their letter also called for an end to the American practice of giving the president sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons; a curb on that authority, they said, would be 'an important safeguard against a possible future president who is unstable or who orders a reckless attack.' The ideas were politically delicate, and Biden made no such pledge. Dr. Garwin told Quest magazine in 1981, 'The only thing nuclear weapons are good for, and have ever been good for, is massive destruction, and by that threat deterring nuclear attack: If you slap me, I'll clobber you.' Richard Lawrence Garwin was born in Cleveland on April 19, 1928, the older of two sons of Robert and Leona (Schwartz) Garwin. His father was a teacher of electronics at a technical high school during the day and a projectionist in a movie theater at night. His mother was a legal secretary. Advertisement At an early age, Richard, called Dick, showed remarkable intelligence and technical ability. By 5, he was repairing family appliances. He and his brother, Edward, attended public schools in Cleveland. Dick graduated at 16 from Cleveland Heights High School in 1944 and earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 1947 from what is now Case Western Reserve University. In 1947, he married Lois Levy. She died in 2018. In addition to his son Thomas, he leaves another son, Jeffrey; a daughter, Laura; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Under Fermi's tutelage at the University of Chicago, he earned a master's degree in 1948 and a doctorate in 1949, scoring the highest marks on doctoral exams ever recorded by the university. He then joined the faculty, but at Fermi's urging spent his summers at the Los Alamos lab, where his H-bomb work unfolded. After retiring in 1993, Dr. Garwin chaired the State Department's Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board until 2001. He served in 1998 on the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. Dr. Garwin's home in Scarsdale is not far from his longtime base at the IBM Watson Labs, which had moved in 1970 from Columbia University to Yorktown Heights. Dr. Garwin held faculty appointments at Harvard and Cornell as well as Columbia. He held 47 patents, wrote some 500 scientific research papers and many books, including 'Nuclear Weapons and World Politics' (1977, with David C. Gompert and Michael Mandelbaum), and 'Megawatts and Megatons: A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age?' (2001, with Georges Charpak). He was the subject of a biography, 'True Genius: The Life and Work of Richard Garwin, the Most Influential Scientist You've Never Heard Of' (2017), by Joel N. Shurkin. His many honors included the 2002 National Medal of Science, the nation's highest award for science and engineering achievements, given by President George W. Bush, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, bestowed by President Obama in 2016. 'Ever since he was a Cleveland kid tinkering with his father's movie projectors, he's never met a problem he didn't want to solve,' Obama said in a lighthearted introduction at the White House. 'Reconnaissance satellites, the MRI, GPS technology, the touch-screen -- all bear his fingerprints. He even patented a mussel washer for shellfish -- that I haven't used. The other stuff I have.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Richard Garwin, a designer of the first hydrogen bomb, dies at 97
Richard L. Garwin, a designer of the first hydrogen bomb, died Tuesday, his daughter-in-law, Tabatha Garwin confirmed to CBS News. The renowned scientist was 97 years old. A prominent scientist who advised several U.S. presidents, Garwin made contributions in nuclear weapons, physics, and in military technology, among many other areas. He published more than 500 papers and was granted 47 U.S. patents, according to The Garwin Archive maintained by the Federation of American Scientists. He was just 23 years old when he designed the first working hydrogen bomb, according to a profile written in IEEE Spectrum magazine. It was detonated in a test codenamed Ivy Mike at Enewetak Atoll in November 1952, yielding 10.4 megatons of TNT, the measurement that quantifies the force of nuclear weapons. Garwin's role had been largely unknown outside of a small circle of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who were involved with the project until 2001, the profile said. In 2016, former President Obama awarded Garwin the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his scientific work. In the citation, Mr. Obama said Garwin,"made pioneering contributions to U.S. defense and intelligence technologies." Garwin was honored with the National Medal of Science in 2002 and was awarded the Vannevar Bush Award in 2023, which honors exceptional lifelong leaders in science and technology. "Richard Garwin is truly remarkable," Dario Gil, Chair of the Board's External Engagement Committee, said in a statement. "His continuing contributions to society, both as a scientific researcher and presidential advisor, help bolster national security and improve international collaboration." Garwin was born in Cleveland in 1928 and lived in Scarsdale, New York. His wife, Lois, of 70 years, predeceased him. The couple had three children. Sneak peek: Fatal First Date Trump teases "good news" on Russia-Ukraine war Preview: "Sunday Morning: By Design" - A Weekend in New Orleans (May 18)
CBS News
14-05-2025
- Science
- CBS News
Richard L. Garwin, a designer of the first hydrogen bomb, dies at 97
Richard L. Garwin, a designer of the first hydrogen bomb, died Tuesday, his daughter-in-law, Tabatha Garwin confirmed to CBS News. The renowned scientist was 97 years old. A prominent scientist who advised several U.S. presidents, Garwin made contributions in nuclear weapons, physics, and in military technology, among many other areas. He published more than 500 papers and was granted 47 U.S. patents, according to The Garwin Archive maintained by the Federation of American Scientists. He was just 23 years old when he designed the first working hydrogen bomb, according to a profile written in IEEE Spectrum magazine. It was detonated in a test codenamed Ivy Mike at Enewetak Atoll in November 1952, yielding 10.4 megatons of TNT, the measurement that quantifies the force of nuclear weapons. Garwin's role had been largely unknown outside of a small circle of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who were involved with the project until 2001, the profile said. U.S. President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to physicist Richard Garwin during an East Room ceremony at the White House November 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor for civilians in the United States of America. Alex Wong / Getty Images In 2016, former President Obama awarded Garwin the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his scientific work. In the citation, Mr. Obama said Garwin,"made pioneering contributions to U.S. defense and intelligence technologies." Garwin was honored with the National Medal of Science in 2002 and was awarded the Vannevar Bush Award in 2023, which honors exceptional lifelong leaders in science and technology. "Richard Garwin is truly remarkable," Dario Gil, Chair of the Board's External Engagement Committee, said in a statement. "His continuing contributions to society, both as a scientific researcher and presidential advisor, help bolster national security and improve international collaboration." Garwin was born in Cleveland in 1928 and lived in Scarsdale, New York. His wife, Lois, of 70 years, predeceased him. The couple had three children.
