Dr. Richard Garwin, physicist, inventor, professor, respected advisor, and longtime ally of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), passed away on May 13, 2025 at the age of 97.
A board member of UCS and key collaborator on UCS work against nuclear proliferation, Garwin will be long remembered for his brilliant mind and seemingly inexhaustible energy. A mentor to many scientists at UCS, he will also be missed for his support and friendship.
“Dick was one of those very rare people who advised the government for decades but also prioritized taking part in the public debate on key issues and working with groups like UCS,” said David Wright, a former director of the UCS Global Security Program. “This made him an invaluable colleague who was generous with his time and ideas, which I—and many others—benefited from again and again. His passing is huge loss.”
Garwin was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1928. The son of a high school teacher, he worked nights in movie theaters to support himself in college. He earned his doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago by the age of 21, under the mentorship of Dr. Enrico Fermi, one of the creators of the world’s first atomic bomb. Garwin and Fermi worked together in the early 1950s to develop the hydrogen bomb, the world’s most powerful weapon.
Garwin became a researcher at IBM, a position he would hold for 40 years, on his own terms: maintaining a faculty position at Columbia University and continuing to consult for the government on nuclear weapons and nuclear arms control. Over the course of his career, Garwin contributed to the invention and refinement of several now-indispensable technologies: touch screens, laser printers, GPS, MRI imaging, and reconnaissance satellites, among others. He published more than 500 papers and was granted 47 U.S. patents.
Garwin served as a senior fellow and director of science and technology for the Council on Foreign Relations and, for seven years, chaired the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board at the U.S. State Department. He was one of a select group of scientists to have been elected as a member of all three U.S. National Academies: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine. Garwin was also a longtime member and chair of JASON, the independent group of scientific advisors to the U.S. government on military issues that also included UCS co-founder Henry Kendall. Garwin advised the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and presidential administrations from Kennedy to Obama. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2002 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. Beginning in 2009, he served as a consultant to the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Offices of the President, advising former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu on the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in 2010 and the U.S. response to the damaged reactors at Fukushima in 2011.
Famously, in his disparate consulting work, Garwin never shied away from speaking his mind when he perceived wrongheadedness or fuzzy thinking. He was vocal in his criticism of the U.S. Defense Department’s Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, known as the “Star Wars” missile defense program, as well as other missile defense systems he saw as ineffective and wasteful. He advocated strenuously for the United States to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear explosive testing.
Garwin’s strongest collaborations with UCS focused on proposing changes to U.S. nuclear policies to keep Americans, and the world, safer. He worked with UCS to push for reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and to take U.S. land-based nuclear weapons off “hair-trigger alert.” He was also one of the original signatories of the 2004 UCS statement on scientific integrity, written during the George W. Bush administration to oppose political interference and suppression of science in the federal government. Just weeks before his death, he co-authored the foreword to a forthcoming UCS report on plutonium pits.
“I was privileged to get to know Dick though his work with UCS,” said Gretchen Goldman, president of UCS. “Even in retirement he was a busy man, but nonetheless made time to contribute to UCS research and advocacy. His scientific intellect and precision were legendary features of UCS board meetings. On behalf of UCS, I am deeply grateful for his years of service to this organization.”