> At IBM, where he worked from 1952 to 1993, Garwin was a key contributor or a facilitator on some of the most important products and breakthroughs of his era, including magnetic resonance imaging, touchscreen monitors, laser printers, and the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform algorithm.
>
> And all that was after he did the thing for which he is most famous. At age 23 and at the behest of Edward Teller, Garwin designed the very first working hydrogen bomb...
> He graduated at 19 and Standard Oil offered him a full ride for graduate study at the University of Chicago, which had one of the nation’s top physics departments.
I think it's fascinating that Garwin was at University of Chicago at the same time as Theodore Hall studied for his masters/Phd in Physics after he left the Manhattan Project. Hall left the university in 1952 for Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City. At exactly that time, an intense counter espionage investigation targeting Hall had been underway for several years.
Hall provided the single most detailed document of the plutonium device to the Russians. They were both child prodigies. Hall was recruited into the Manhattan Project straight out of Harvard when he was 18.
"journalist Dave Lindorff, writing in The Nation on January 4, 2022, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Hall's FBI file in 2021. This 130-page file included communications between FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the head of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Gen. Joseph F. Carroll, showing that Carroll had effectively blocked Hoover's intended pursuit of Hall and Sax, probably fearing that Hall's arrest would have, in the political climate of the McCarthy Era, forced the Air Force to furlough and lose their top missile expert, Edward Hall. Carroll, a former top aide to Hoover before he became the first head of the USAF OSI, ultimately allowed Hoover's agents to question Ed Hall on June 12, 1951 (with an OSI officer monitoring the interview). Within several weeks of that session, the Air Force, which had conducted and completed its own investigation into Edward Hall's loyalty (having their own investigators question him four times), promoted him to Lt. Colonel, and later Colonel, and elevated him from assistant director to director of its missile development program. The promotions were a clear slap in the face to Hoover. Ed Hall went on to complete the development of the Minuteman missile program, and then retired."
> One proposed version[^1] had the force of more than 600,000 Hiroshimas. Even so, Cold War analysts coolly judged that it could reduce a region the size of France to ashes. His weapon was a planet shaker. It could end civilization.
Were they just wrong by an order of magnitude or 2 because of previously unforseen limits, like air pressure? Or maybe 100MT is not the same as 600k Hiroshimas. Casually, the blast doesn't look like it's has a similar effect.
He was an active and kind participant in many Pugwash, ISODARCO and Amaldi conferences. From 1982 on, Garwin worked with Gorbatschev’s Science Advisor, Evgeny Velikhov, and other American and Russian scientist on proposals limiting nuclear arsenals and space-based weapons.
Richard Garwin’s role in designing the hydrogen bomb was obscured
(nytimes.com)72 points by LAsteNERD 19 May 2025 | 31 comments
Comments
> At IBM, where he worked from 1952 to 1993, Garwin was a key contributor or a facilitator on some of the most important products and breakthroughs of his era, including magnetic resonance imaging, touchscreen monitors, laser printers, and the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform algorithm. > > And all that was after he did the thing for which he is most famous. At age 23 and at the behest of Edward Teller, Garwin designed the very first working hydrogen bomb...
I think it's fascinating that Garwin was at University of Chicago at the same time as Theodore Hall studied for his masters/Phd in Physics after he left the Manhattan Project. Hall left the university in 1952 for Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City. At exactly that time, an intense counter espionage investigation targeting Hall had been underway for several years.
Hall provided the single most detailed document of the plutonium device to the Russians. They were both child prodigies. Hall was recruited into the Manhattan Project straight out of Harvard when he was 18.
"journalist Dave Lindorff, writing in The Nation on January 4, 2022, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Hall's FBI file in 2021. This 130-page file included communications between FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the head of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Gen. Joseph F. Carroll, showing that Carroll had effectively blocked Hoover's intended pursuit of Hall and Sax, probably fearing that Hall's arrest would have, in the political climate of the McCarthy Era, forced the Air Force to furlough and lose their top missile expert, Edward Hall. Carroll, a former top aide to Hoover before he became the first head of the USAF OSI, ultimately allowed Hoover's agents to question Ed Hall on June 12, 1951 (with an OSI officer monitoring the interview). Within several weeks of that session, the Air Force, which had conducted and completed its own investigation into Edward Hall's loyalty (having their own investigators question him four times), promoted him to Lt. Colonel, and later Colonel, and elevated him from assistant director to director of its missile development program. The promotions were a clear slap in the face to Hoover. Ed Hall went on to complete the development of the Minuteman missile program, and then retired."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Hall
Except... [^1] https://archive.ph/Md1YG
[^1]https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Were they just wrong by an order of magnitude or 2 because of previously unforseen limits, like air pressure? Or maybe 100MT is not the same as 600k Hiroshimas. Casually, the blast doesn't look like it's has a similar effect.
He was an active and kind participant in many Pugwash, ISODARCO and Amaldi conferences. From 1982 on, Garwin worked with Gorbatschev’s Science Advisor, Evgeny Velikhov, and other American and Russian scientist on proposals limiting nuclear arsenals and space-based weapons.
[0] https://pugwash.org/2025/05/20/obituary-and-appreciation-for...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugwash_Conferences_on_Science...