Richard L. Garwin to Give Two Talks at Yale Engineering

Experimental physicist Richard L. Garwin, IBM fellow emeritus and contributor to the design of the first hydrogen bomb, will present two talks sponsored by the Faculty of Engineering on Wednesday, November 17, at Yale.

Experimental physicist Richard L. Garwin, IBM fellow emeritus and contributor to the design of the first hydrogen bomb, will present two talks sponsored by the Faculty of Engineering on Wednesday, November 17, at Yale.

“Mining the Acoustic Records in the Kennedy Assassination” will be the topic of the Yale Engineering Dean’s Special Seminar at 1 p.m. in 220 Dunham Laboratory, 10 Hillhouse Avenue. The 1979 House Special Committee on Assassinations cited the Dallas Police Department radio transmissions on November 22, 1963 as demonstrating a second shooter from the “grassy knoll.” In contrast, a National Academy Committee of which Garwin was a member, in 1982, showed that the putative shots in the recording took place almost a minute after the assassination. Recent work with four colleagues has strengthened this conclusion and provided technical evidence that will be demonstrated.

“Missile Defense and Space Weapons” will be presented at 4 p.m. in Davies Auditorium, 15 Prospect Street. Garwin will speak to the premise that missile defense under deployment in Alaska and California to protect the United States against North Korean ICBMs carrying nuclear weapons will not do its job. He asserts countermeasures are too simple and space weapons, while appealing in principle, are vulnerable and provocative and will impair rather than improve U.S. security.

Garwin served as scientific adviser to several U.S. presidents, received the presidential Enrico Fermi Award and the National Medal of Science. He has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Group to the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff and served on the Rumsfeld Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. He was a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee 1962-65 and 1969-72, and of the Defense Science Board 1966-69. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the IEEE, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Philosophical Society. He has published more than 500 papers, and been granted more than 45 patents. His significant contributions are in the fields of nuclear and low-temperature physics; the design of nuclear weaponry and deterrence; and computer elements and systems. His latest book is “Megawatts and Megatons: The Future of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons.”

Both talks are free and open to the public.

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Janet Rettig Emanuel: janet.emanuel@yale.edu, 203-432-2157