Latest news with #H-bomb
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Richard Garwin, designer of the first H-bomb who also paved the way for MRI, GPS and touch-screens
Richard Garwin, who has died aged 97, was an American nuclear scientist who designed the world's first hydrogen bomb and went on to become a presidential adviser on arms control, while helping to lay the groundwork for such technology as magnetic resonance imaging, high-speed laser printers and touch-screen monitors. The Nobel prizewinner Enrico Fermi called him 'the only true genius I have ever met', but he never became a household name: a 2017 biography was subtitled 'The Most Influential Scientist You've Never Heard Of'. Edward Teller is usually credited, in an unattributed phrase, as the 'father of the sweet technology of the H-bomb'. Due to the secrecy surrounding its development, it was only in recent years that historians have become aware of Garwin's role, following the publication in 2001 of a transcript of a recording made by Teller in which, while not eschewing the credit for devising the bomb, the scientist recalled that the 'first design was made by Dick Garwin'. In 1951 Garwin, then a 23-year-old faculty member at the University of Chicago, was working during his summer holidays at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico where, building on Teller's ideas, he designed the 'Mike', an 82-ton sausage-shaped test device, after working out how to direct the radiation from the atomic device to initiate a fusion reaction in the hydrogen – what he called 'the match for the nuclear bonfire'. 'The shot was fired almost precisely according to Garwin's design,' Teller recalled, on Enewetak Atoll on November 1 1952. The power of the blast – 450 times that of Nagasaki – stunned even those who had watched previous bomb tests, with a mushroom cloud five times the height of Everest and 100 miles wide. Teller subsequently became famous for destroying the career of Robert Oppenheimer, who had run the Los Alamos lab in the Second World War, giving birth to the atomic bomb, but afterwards questioned the morality of devising an even more powerful weapon. When, amid the anti-communist paranoia of the McCarthy years, Oppenheimer had his security clearance removed by the government, Teller was the only member of the scientific community to testify against him. In fact Garwin, a board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, had a lot of sympathy with Oppenheimer, telling an interviewer that if he could wave a magic wand to make the H- bomb go away, 'I would do that.' But as the clock could not be wound back, he believed that the best hope for human survival lay in the deterrence doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that suggests that a nuclear attack by one superpower would result in a retaliatory nuclear strike, leading to the complete destruction of both attacker and defender. 'The capability for MAD,' Garwin said 'is not a theory, but a fact of life'. In the 1980s, when Teller convinced President Ronald Reagan to invest in a defensive shield that, he claimed, would make it probable that enough Americans would survive a nuclear conflict to ensure the US's continued existence, Garwin was vocal in his criticism of the so-called 'Star Wars' initiative as ineffective and wasteful. He saw a Soviet-American balance of weaponry and arms-control measures as the best way of avoiding nuclear Armageddon. Richard Lawrence Garwin was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 19 1928, the older of two sons of Robert Garwin and Leona, née Schwartz. His father was a high school teacher; his mother a legal secretary. From Cleveland Heights High School Garwin graduated in physics in 1947 from what is now Case Western Reserve University, followed by a master's degree and doctorate under Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty, but at Fermi's suggestion spent his summers at the Los Alamos lab, where he returned every year until 1966. For 40 years from the early 1950s Garwin was a researcher at IBM, maintaining a faculty position at Columbia University and advising presidents (excepting Reagan) from Eisenhower to Clinton on nuclear weapons and arms-control issues. As a researcher he contributed to a huge range of scientific discoveries and innovations, and in 2016, when he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama, the president recalled: '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. 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.' In 1991 Garwin chaired a conference to discuss solutions to staunching the Kuwaiti oil leaks during the first Gulf War. He advised the Obama government on dealing with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. From 1993 to 2001 he chaired the State Department's Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board. His belief in the vital importance of nuclear balance led him to oppose any policy that might upset that balance. In 2007, in evidence to the British Commons Defence Select Committee, he described Prime Minister Tony Blair's claim that work must start soon on replacing the ageing Vanguard-class subs of Britain's nuclear submarine fleet as 'highly premature''. The subs' working life could be extended to 45 years or more, he argued, putting off the need for a replacement into the late 2030s or beyond. In 2021 he was one of 700 signatories to an open letter to President Biden, asking him to pledge that the US would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict and calling for curbs on his role as sole authority in ordering the use of nuclear weapons – as 'an important safeguard against a possible future president who is unstable or who orders a reckless attack'. The plea fell on deaf ears. In 1947 Richard Garwin married Lois Levy. She died in 2018, and he is survived by two sons and a daughter. Richard Garwin, born April 19 1928, died May 13 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
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.
Japan Times
25-12-2024
- Science
- Japan Times
How to make America's drone panic so very much worse
In 1954, a few people in the town of Bellingham, Washington, reported seeing pits and dings on their windshields — perhaps the work of vandals. Roadblocks were quickly set up. This became front-page news in nearby Seattle, prompting people to rush to check their own windshields. Thousands then reported that they, too, had mysterious dings, in an ever-widening area from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia. Panic quickly spread. People speculated that the cause might be cosmic rays, a radio transmitter in a nearby naval base, fallout from H-bomb tests or sand-flea eggs hatching in windshields. The mayor of Seattle begged for help from the governor and the White House. Motorists began stopping police cars to add their name to the list of the affected. Scientists were called in, Geiger counters whipped out. The mysterious windshield pits of 1954 turned out not to be the result of vandals, aliens, radioactivity or sand fleas, but were instead the domain of mass human psychology. Examinations revealed that these were mundane, long-present imperfections, everyday wear and tear. It's just that no one had bothered to notice them before, because who studies his windshield that closely?
