NEWSNEWSFOCUSFOCUS on July 26, 2013 www.sciencemag.org

in industry, 47 patented inventions, and 60 years of advising multiple parts of the U.S. Indispensable Outsider government on multiple technical issues. “He’s done so damn many things,” says Peter Richard Garwin has helped advise U.S. presidents, IBM, and secret Zimmerman, formerly chief scientist at the

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Downloaded from agencies on how to make things work “that it’s hard to single out any one.” Garwin advised then–Energy Secretary THE FIRST THING ANYBODY SAYS ABOUT THE his solutions occasionally raise other prob- Steven Chu on alternatives for dealing with physicist/inventor/adviser Richard Garwin lems. Prime example: In 1951, Garwin was the Fukushima nuclear plant’s meltdown in is that his graduate school adviser 60 years 23 years old and the hydrogen bomb, which 2011 and on plugging the BP oil well blow- ago, Enrico Fermi, said that he was the only worked only in theory, needed proof. So in a out in 2010. In 1981, Garwin pioneered ges- true genius he’d met. The next thing is that few weeks, Garwin designed an experiment, ture recognition for a touch screen, on the Garwin has advised, sometimes impoliti- and a year later Los Alamos National Labo- IBM color PC monitor. In 1969, he invented cally, every administration since Eisen- ratory in New Mexico had built it and called the tensioned cables that would hold a deep- hower’s on every possible technical issue. it Mike, then had taken it to Eniwetok in the water fl oating airport steady in large waves; The third thing is the Garwin joke: It’s the South Pacifi c and set it off. The 11-megaton floating airports were never built, but the French Revolution, an aristocrat is placed in explosion was 1000 times more powerful than approach was used for oil-drilling platforms. the guillotine, the blade won’t drop, “God’s the atomic bomb that fl attened two-thirds of Since 1968, he’s been writing about handling will,” says the guillotiner, and lets the aris- Hiroshima. Garwin didn’t watch it—he was data in health care. The upshot: He is one of tocrat go free; next aristocrat, same thing, busy working on more portable H-bombs— 13 people in the world who is a member of blade sticks, “God’s will,” goes free. The next and in fact has never seen a nuclear explo- all three U.S. National Academies: science, in line is Garwin, who looks up at the blade sion. “I don’t need it,” he told an interviewer. engineering, and medicine. and says, “Oh, I see the problem.” “I have a good imagination.” Nothing ties these fields and func- Garwin himself agrees that the third, an Garwin went on to an astonishingly var- tions together, no single intellectual thread. old joke, could have been written for him. He ied career that included fundamental contri- Garwin just likes being useful, he says, and

is a compulsive problem-solver—although butions to particle physics, a 41-year career helps solve problems as they arise. And if his ANAND KAMALAKAR CREDIT:

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Frequent visitor. Garwin has been a White House ment on the radioactive decay of mu mesons A RESTLESS MIND adviser off and on since the 1950s. that has become part of the modern view of particle physics. 1951– Designs solution to a problem causes another prob- The same year Garwin joined IBM, he 1952 experiment lem, then he solves that one, too. If a coher- was introduced for the fi rst time to the cadre for“Mike” H-bomb test ent narrative can be imposed on Garwin of academics advising the government on at all, it is that having solved the hydrogen science and technology. Centered at Harvard bomb, he has spent the last 6 decades work- and the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- .NRO.GOV/NEWS/ ing to help governments control it. ogy, it included engineer Jerome Wiesner, 1952– John F. Kennedy’s science adviser, who in on IBM Watson Precise design 1957 asked Garwin to join the newly form- Scientifi c Laboratory TIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/2.0)], TIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/2.0)], Richard Lawrence Garwin was born in 1928, ing President’s Science Advisory Commit- in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from what tee (PSAC). Garwin served an unusual two researcher is now Case Western Reserve University in 4-year terms on PSAC and led several of its 3 years, working in his father’s sound equip- panels, in particular, those looking into bal-

-2.0 (HTTP://CREA ment repair business, and marrying a local listic missile threats and military aircraft. He girl. In 1947, he moved to the University helped lay the basis for GPS, drone aircraft, of Chicago where, in 1949, he received his and the electronic battlefi eld. “I learned a Ph.D. with Fermi on the radioactive decay of lot,” he said. 1957 With Leon Lederman, mu meson atomic nuclei. PSAC also helped Garwin define his experiment TIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE (NRO) (HTTP://WWW (NRO) OFFICE RECONNAISSANCE TIONAL Garwin stayed on at Chicago as an ideal job: sitting in a room for 8 hours while 1960s instructor and in 1950 began spending sum- generals, admirals, scientists, and corpora- “Poppy” surveillance mers consulting at Los Alamos because, as he tions explained their problems and he and satellite work

said, the university paid its faculty members the rest of the panel proposed answers. on July 26, 2013 for 9 months but his family ate for 12. In his He later found the same congenial setting second summer there, Edward Teller, also at when he joined a secret government advi- TIONAL BIRD RESCUE RESEARCH CENTER [CC-BY CENTER RESCUE RESEARCH BIRD TIONAL Chicago and consulting at Los Alamos, told sory group called JASON, also made up him that he and Los Alamos physicist Stani- of mostly academic scientists. Garwin and slaw Ulam had a theory that an atomic bomb IBM had agreed from the start that his job 1970 could be used to trigger a hydrogen bomb, would include spending a third of his time Faults super- but the theory needed a proof-of-principle. giving advice to the government. sonic transport Garwin thought through the options—the Often that time was devoted to highly while serving on President’s configurations, dimensions, and materials classifi ed “black” programs, which bypass www.sciencemag.org Science Advisory that would focus the radiation of an atomic open peer review or qualifi ed congressio- Committee bomb “primary” and trigger thermonuclear nal oversight, making the advice of inde- fusion in the “secondary”—and decided that pendent scientists especially valuable. designing a real bomb would be just as easy. Since the early 1960s, Garwin worked on The Mike test worked, Teller said, “almost several types of spy satellites, though he precisely” as designed. Later, when Teller won’t say exactly what he did or for whom. 1973 Brokers fast Fourier trans-

got credit for fathering the H-bomb, Garwin Some satellites, whose names haven’t been Downloaded from ; STEVEN G. JOHNSON/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; AP; BY INTERNA AP; COMMONS; G. JOHNSON/WIKIMEDIA ; STEVEN TIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/2.0)], VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; IBM ARCHIVES; BBY NA BBY ARCHIVES; IBM COMMONS; WIKIMEDIA VIA TIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/2.0)], didn’t argue: By then Garwin had learned, as declassified and which Garwin talked form algorithm he said, that when serving the government National Security Adviser Henry Kiss- development you could either get something done or get inger into backing, used charge-coupled

NEW YORK TIMES YORK NEW credit for it, but not both. devices that stored images and sent them

-2.0 (HTTP://CREA -2.0

THE Meanwhile, particle physics was becom- back via radio. These satellites’ sensitiv- 1995 Co-authors JASON review of Compre- ing a science of large teams, large machines, ity to light needed improving. Still others, hensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and long waits for experiments, none of like the Poppy series, collected not images, which Garwin found agreeable. So in 1952, but radar signals showing the locations, 2002 he took a job at IBM’s Watson Scientific frequencies, and ranges of Soviet radars. National Laboratory, then in New York City, where he Garwin helped Poppy “a lot,” he says, Medal of could, he said, “decide one day what I was “because I asked, ‘Is this how it works?’ Science going to do the next day.” At IBM he worked And they said, ‘No, that’s not how it works.’ on everything from the properties of materi- And I said, ‘Why doesn’t it work that way?’ als under extremely cold conditions, to pro- And they made it work that way.” totypes of computers controllable by gaze, Garwin thinks he’s been most useful to to the little accelerometer that protects the black programs at the CIA and National 2010 Recruited by DOE brains of laptops or other smart devices when Reconnaissance Offi ce (NRO). Apparently to help with they’re dropped. In 1957, he took leave from they agreed: The CIA awarded him the the Deepwater an IBM project to develop a superconduct- R.V. Jones award, and NRO declared him Horizon ing computer, and with Leon Lederman con- one of the 10 Founders of National Recon- oil spill

CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): BY THE OFFICIAL CTBTO PHOTOSTREAM [CC-BY PHOTOSTREAM CTBTO OFFICIAL THE BY BOTTOM): TO (TOP CREDITS COMMONS; WIKIMEDIA VIA DOMAIN], [PUBLIC PRESS/2005/2005-06.PDF) VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS ceived and conducted, in 4 days, an experi- naisance. Garwin’s special contribution to

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the intelligence community, says Robert A. sees. He’s showing politicians what, if McDonald, director of NRO’s Center for politics could be sidestepped, might then the Study of National Reconnaissance in be possible—“maybe we should be ask- Virginia, is that he pushed them to “stretch ing whether we could deploy missiles their technological limits,” and gave them, near Vladivostok,” Jeanloz says. “He’s not the answers they wanted, but “indepen- saying, ‘You policymakers have to real- dent, no-holds-barred assessments.” ize you’re excluding a universe of possi- ble solutions.’ ” The approach is peculiarly Mass destruction Garwinian, Jeanloz says: “He’s one of the The issue on which Garwin has worked most few people who can get away with it.” intently is arms control—the natural conse- Garwin turned 85 this year. Some days quence of an involvement with the hydrogen he goes to his emeritus offi ce at IBM and bomb. One way or another, he has helped dresses in good khakis; when he’s work- shape all the treaties to ban nuclear weap- ing from home, he dresses in older kha- ons tests since the fi rst treaty talks in 1958. kis; he wears a tie to go to Washing- He helped convince President Kennedy to ton. He uses public transportation and put controls, called Permissive Action Links carries the routes and schedules in his (PALs), on U.S. nuclear weapons stationed head. He’s moved from his home of in Europe so that they couldn’t be exploded 55 years because he could no longer without authority. (Talking later to a Russian climb out to fi x the roof and now lives in a scientist at CISAC, the National Academy of Scrubber. Garwin’s mussel washer is one of his modest apartment with the wife he mar- Sciences’ Committee on International Secu- 47 inventions covered by U.S. patents. ried when they were teens. For lunch when rity and Arms Control, Garwin found out he’s at home, his wife often cuts up a fresh

the Russians didn’t then have PALs on their based defenses. He helped write the so-called pineapple, which they eat for dessert for on July 26, 2013 bombs in Cuba either.) Rumsfeld report in 1998 on the missile threat several days. Unlike his old friend and colleague from “rogue states,” which missile defense “I’ve never seen him down in the dumps,” Sidney Drell, now retired from the SLAC advocates later used to support their views— says Philip Coyle, who was an associate National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo to Garwin’s annoyance but not astonishment. director at Obama’s White House Office Park, California, Garwin isn’t trying to take These days, he’s arguing with the National of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) nuclear weapons down to zero: “I don’t Academies’ 2012 report on missile defense. where Garwin is a consultant. “Nothing sets see the elimination of nuclear weapons,” The report recommends new radars, which him back.” In 2002, he won the National Garwin says, “or even a path in that direc- Garwin says would be inadequate to dis- Medal of Science. He gets 40 to 60 e-mails

tion.” He’s against proliferation of weapons tinguish incoming missiles from decoys. per day—on CISAC, JASON, OSTP, and www.sciencemag.org to any countries that don’t have them. He’s “If you feel compelled to have a missile occasionally intelligence business—and for the immediate reduction in numbers of defense because you’ve always said missile only about 10 per Saturday or Sunday. weapons and further reductions in the future, defense is necessary,” he told an interviewer, Garwin says that he could stop doing all he from the current 5000 in the United States “go ahead, have a missile defense. But don’t does and devote himself to his hobbies, if he and 17,000 or so worldwide—a point at spend very much money on it, and don’t lie had hobbies; or he could go back to science, which, he says, the weapons are more numer- about its performance.” “but it is unlikely that I would make any sig-

ous than their targets—down to a few hun- nifi cant contributions at this stage,” and so, Downloaded from dred, “enough for any conceivable purpose.” Category of one when he sees any probability of a good out- Since 1992, Garwin has worked on nearly If Garwin’s advice has a fl aw, some of his come, he says, “I prefer to do what I have every JASON report on the health of nuclear peers say, it’s a sporadic tone-deafness to been doing for a long time.” weapons in the U.S. stockpile, most notably human or institutional realities. For exam- Maybe that’s another result of helping the 1995 report certifying that the weapons ple, his proposal to intercept enemy missiles the hydrogen bomb into the world: never were a reliable deterrent without having to be during their more targetable boost phase by being able to give up. Drell says that poli- tested and that, yes, the country could sign basing the missile defenses close to poten- tics will have so large a part in solving the the international Comprehensive Nuclear- tial attackers, such as North Korea, is prob- problem of missile defense that he himself Test-Ban Treaty. Noting that he “had a ably not going to win Chinese or Rus- has quit arguing about it—but that, he says, lot to do” with nuclear weapons himself, sian approval. And testifying in Congress is “a cop-out by Sid Drell. Dick Garwin Garwin said of the JASON report, “I am most against the Nixon administration’s plan for never cops out.” William Press, at the Uni- pleased to be an author of this document.” a supersonic transport plane, as Garwin did versity of Texas, Austin, and current mem- Garwin also works on the other half of in 1970 while sitting on PSAC, was never ber of the President’s Council of Advisors controlling weapons: missile defense. He’s in the playbook for presidential advisers. on Science and Technology who has worked advised, written, and testified on its myr- It has been cited as a reason that Richard with Garwin since 1977, says that whenever iad aspects since 1968, when he and Hans Nixon disbanded PSAC. he tries to duck out of some issue, “I hear Bethe wrote an article for Scientifi c Ameri- The occasional tone-deafness, says Dick’s voice—‘Bill, those things don’t just can outlining the pros and cons that have Raymond Jeanloz, a geophysicist and fel- happen. It’s people like me who make them been debated ever since. He continued argu- low arms-controller at the University of happen.’ ” ing through the 1980s debates on Star Wars, California, Berkeley, doesn’t mean that –ANN FINKBEINER

CREDIT: U.S. PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE U.S. PATENT CREDIT: the Reagan administration’s idea for space- Garwin loses credibility among his advi- Ann Finkbeiner is a writer in Baltimore, Maryland.

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