Richard Garwin

Garwin was born to a Jewish family in Cleveland on April 19, 1928.{{Cite news |last=McFadden |first=Robert D. |date=May 14, 2025 |title=Richard L. Garwin, a Creator of the Hydrogen Bomb, Dies at 97 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/science/richard-l-garwin-dead.html |url-access=limited |access-date=May 14, 2025 |work=The New York Times |authorlink=Robert D. McFadden}}{{Cite web |title=National Science Board |url=https://www.nsf.gov/nsb/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=307350 |access-date=May 20, 2025 |website=National Science Board}} He received his bachelor's degree from the Case Institute of Technology in 1947, and two years later his Doctor of Philosophy, at the age of 21, from the University of Chicago under the supervision of Enrico Fermi. Another of Fermi's students, Marvin L. Goldberger, claims that Fermi said that "Garwin was the only true genius he had ever met".

After graduating from the University of Chicago, Garwin joined the physics faculty there and spent summers as a consultant to Los Alamos National Laboratory working on nuclear weapons. Garwin was the author of the actual design used in the first hydrogen bomb (code-named Mike) in 1952. He was assigned the job by Edward Teller, with the instructions that he was to make it as conservative a design as possible in order to prove the concept was feasible.Teller, Edward. Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing, 2001), p. 327. He also worked on the development of the first spy satellites, for which he was named one of the ten founders of national reconnaissance.{{Cite book |last=National Reconnaissance Office |url=http://www.nro.gov/history/csnr/leaders/Founders_of_Natl_Reconnaissance.pdf |title=Founders of National Reconnaissance |publisher=GPO}} While at IBM, his work on spin-echo magnetic resonance laid the foundations for MRI;{{Cite web |last=IBM |title=Richard L. Garwin receives the National Medal of Science |url=https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22079.wss |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130622021510/http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22079.wss |archive-date=June 22, 2013 |access-date=March 20, 2016 |website=IBM News Release}} he was the catalyst for the discovery and publication of the Cooley–Tukey FFT algorithm, today a staple of digital signal processing; he worked on gravitational waves; and played a crucial role in the development of laser printers and touch-screen monitors. He was granted 47 patents and published over 500 papers.{{Cite web |last=Federation of American Scientists |title=The Garwin Archive |url=https://fas.org/rlg/}}

In December 1952, he joined IBM's Watson laboratory, where he worked continuously until his retirement in 1993. He was until his death IBM Fellow Emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. During his career Garwin divided his time between applied research, basic science, and consulting to the U.S. Government on national-security matters. Parallel to his appointment at IBM, at different periods he held an adjunct professorship in physics at Columbia University; an appointment as the Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University; and a professorship in public policy, and in physics, at Harvard University.Brennan, Jean Ford, [http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/brennan/ The IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University: A History], IBM, Armonk, New York, February 18, 1971. Cf. pp.31-43. "By the end of 1952, Richard L. Garwin, a former pupil of Professor Enrico Fermi, had come to the Lab from the University of Chicago where he had been an assistant professor of nuclear physics."{{Cite web |last=National Science Foundation |title=Medal of Science 50 Videos -- Richard Garwin |url=https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/medalofscience50/richardgarwin.jsp |access-date=March 20, 2016}} He was also the Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, NY.{{Cite web |date=2018 |title=U.S. Strategic Nuclear Policy, An Oral History (Part 2) |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA_8I5hjNO0 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211214/cA_8I5hjNO0 |archive-date=December 14, 2021 |access-date=July 30, 2019 |website=YouTube |publisher=Sandia National Labs |language=en}}{{cbignore}}

Garwin served on the U.S. President's Science Advisory Committee from 1962–65 and 1969–72, under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. He was a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group from 1966. As a member of the Institute for Defense Analyses' Jason Division of U.S. university scientists. on Sat. February 3, 1968, Garwin “traveled to Vietnam” with Henry Way Kendall and several other scientists “to check on the operation of the electronic barrier”{{explain|reason=What the hell is that?|date=December 2021}} he and other Jason scientists developed for the Pentagon to utilize in Indochina, according to The Jasons by Ann Finkbeiner. And, in the 1960s, "Jason scientist Richard Garwin, a nuclear physicist who, years before, helped design the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb, held a seminar on the SADEYE cluster bomb and other munitions that would be most effective when accompanying the sensors" of the electronic barrier in Vietnam, according to page 205 of Annie Jacobsen's book, "The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top Secret Military Research Agency," that Little Brown & Company, NY published in 2015. During the 1980s and 1990s he advocated anti-ballistic missile concepts such as the bed of nails defense,{{Cite magazine |last=Garwin |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Garwin |date=Autumn 1976 |title=Effective Military Technology for the 1980s |magazine=International Security |pages=50–77 |volume=1 |doi=10.2307/2538499 |jstor=2538499 |number=2}} a plan that was never implemented.

From 1993 to August 2001, he chaired the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board of the U.S. Department of State. From 1966 to 1969 he served on the Defense Science Board. He also served on the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States in 1998. He was until his death a member of the National Academies' Committee on International Security and Arms Control and served on 27 other National Academies committees.{{Cite web |last=National Institute of Medicine |title=Directory: IOM Member – Richard L. Garwin, Ph.D. |url=http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/Global/Directory/Detail.aspx?id=0000055452}}

In 2017, science journalist Joel N. Shurkin published a biography of Garwin, True Genius: The Life and Work of Richard Garwin, in which Shurkin writes about "the most influential scientist you never heard of."{{Cite journal |author-link=Kendrick Frazier |date=2017 |title=New and Notable |journal=Skeptical Inquirer |volume=41 |issue=3 |page=61 |author1-last=Frazier |author1-first=Kendrick}}{{cite book | last=Shurkin | first=Joel N. | title=True Genius: The Life and Work of Richard Garwin, the Most Influential Scientist You've Never Heard of | publisher=Prometheus Books | publication-place=Amherst, New York | date=2017 | isbn=978-1-63388-223-2}}

In 1947, Garwin married Lois Levy (died 2018), and they had three children, one of whom is musician and journalist Laura Garwin. He died at his home in Scarsdale, New York, on May 13, 2025, at the age of 97.

Garwin received the National Medal of Science, the United States' highest honor for the fields of science and engineering (award year 2002), for "his research and discoveries in physics and related fields, and of his longstanding service to the Nation by providing valuable scientific advice on important questions of national security over a half a century."National Science Foundation, [https://www.nsf.gov/od/nms/recip_details.cfm?recip_id=5000000000418 "Richard L. Garwin"], The President's National Medal of Science: Recipient Details. He also received the equivalent, La Grande Médaille de l'Académie des Sciences, from France for his role in discovering parity violation in pion decay. He is among a select few scientists to have been elected to all three U.S. National Academies: the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1966),{{Cite web |title=Richard L. Garwin |url=http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/55452.html |access-date=June 27, 2022 |website=www.nasonline.org}} the National Academy of Medicine (1975), and the National Academy of Engineering (1978). He was also a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969) and the American Philosophical Society (1979).{{Cite web |title=Dick Lawrence Garwin |url=https://www.amacad.org/person/dick-lawrence-garwin |access-date=June 27, 2022 |website=American Academy of Arts & Sciences |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Richard+Garwin&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=June 27, 2022 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}} In 2016, President Barack Obama honored Garwin with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.{{Cite web |date=November 16, 2016 |title=President Obama Names Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom |url=https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/11/16/president-obama-names-recipients-presidential-medal-freedom |access-date=November 16, 2016 |website=whitehouse.gov |via=National Archives}} Garwin also received 1988 AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility and the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1997.{{Cite web |title=Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement |url=https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/#science-exploration |website=www.achievement.org |publisher=American Academy of Achievement}}

• Accelerator-driven subcritical reactor
• Energy amplifier
• Megawatts and Megatons

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• [http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=people/Garwin,+Richard+L Annotated Bibliography for Richard Garwin from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120302041536/http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=people%2FGarwin%2C+Richard+L |date=March 2, 2012 }}
• [https://fas.org/rlg/ The Garwin Archive] at the Federation of American Scientists
• {{Cite web |title=Garwin: Documentary about scientist Richard Garwin |url=http://www.garwinthemovie.com/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190118052224/http://www.garwinthemovie.com/ |archive-date=January 18, 2019}}
• [http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-problem-solver-a-portrait-of-physicist-richard-garwin/ The Problem-Solver: A Portrait Of Physicist Richard Garwin - Science Friday, 28 April 2017 (Ira Flatow interview with Joel Shurkin)]
• [https://spectrum.ieee.org/richard-garwin How the Designer of the First Hydrogen Bomb Got the Gig; Richard Garwin was assigned the task by Edward Teller at age 23 (IEEE Spectrum, 2nd Sep. 2024)]

• [https://libserv.aip.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1680D73IU0570.32021&limitbox_1=LO01+%3D+icos&menu=search&aspect=power&npp=10&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=rev-icos&ri=58&source=%7E%21horizon&index=.GW&term=RICHARD+L.+GARWIN+NUCLEAR+ARMS+CONTROL+AND+DISARMAMENT+COLLECTION%2C+1963-2011&x=18&y=15&aspect=power Richard L. Garwin nuclear arms control and disarmament collection, 1963-2011, Niels Bohr Library & Archives]
• [https://libserv.aip.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1680D73IU0570.32021&profile=rev-icos&source=~!horizon&view=subscriptionsummary&uri=full=3100006~!40684~!1&ri=57&aspect=power&menu=search&ipp=20&spp=20&staffonly=&term=RICHARD+L.+GARWIN+ADDITION+TO+NUCLEAR&index=.GW&uindex=&aspect=power&menu=search&ri=57&limitbox_1=LO01+=+icos Richard L. Garwin addition to nuclear arms control and disarmament collection, 1967-2003, Niels Bohr Library & Archives]

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