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Richard Garwin, Physicist and Nuclear Arms Control Advocate, Dies at 97

Richard Garwin, Kurt Gottfried and Hans Bethe at a press conference on missile defense, March 22, 1984. Source: James J. MacKenzie, flickr.com.
May 28, 2025

By Rebecca Slayton, PACS Director

Richard Garwin, an innovative physicist who made major contributions to nuclear weapons development while also advocating for nuclear arms control, died on May 13, 2025, at the age of 97. 

Described by his biographer as the “most influential scientist you’ve never heard of(link is external),” Garwin played a crucial role in the design of the first nuclear fusion weapon, which was detonated in the Marshall Islands in November 1952. Garwin went on to advise several presidents and spent much of his career at IBM Research, working first out of Columbia University and then Yorktown Heights. 

Garwin also had a special relationship to Cornell University, collaborating with physics professor and Nobel laureate Hans Bethe on arms control efforts for several decades, and becoming an A.D. White Professor in the mid-1980s. While at Cornell, Garwin played an important role in the intellectual life of the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Herb Lin, who was then a postdoctoral researcher at the Reppy Institute, recalls first meeting Garwin at Cornell(link is external): “I was quite excited to be able to learn from him and to engage him as a colleague, so I was taken down a few pegs when our first interaction was him asking me to get him coffee.” 

Lin, who subsequently pursued a distinguished career at the National Academy of Sciences and then Stanford University, notes that over the next 40 years, “our relationship evolved to be more peer-like, but truth be told, I’ve never met anyone who was really a true peer of Garwin’s.”

For more on Garwin’s life and legacy, see this collection of essays(link is external) published in the May 2025 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Photo credit: Richard Garwin, Kurt Gottfried and Hans Bethe at a press conference on missile defense, March 22, 1984. Source: James J. MacKenzie, flickr.com.

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