Questions and Answers on the COVID-19 Crisis with Richard Garwin

Richard Garwin received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1949 at the age of 21 under the supervision of Enrico Fermi. In 1952, he joined the newly created IBM Research Laboratory at Columbia University. His research has ranged from particle physics to condensed matter physics with forays into nuclear magnetic resonance and computer technology. In 1950, Garwin became involved as a summer consultant at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where in July 1951 he designed the first hydrogen bomb, tested as “Ivy Mike” 16 months late, at an explosive yield equivalent to some 700 Hiroshima bombs. In 1958 he became a consultant to the President’s Science Advisory Committee, joining the committee as a full member from 1962-1965 and again from 1969 to 1972. Since 1966, he has been a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group and a large part of his career has been devoted to issues surrounding nuclear arms control and nuclear proliferation. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and winner of the APS Leo Szilard Lectureship. In presenting Garwin with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed upon a civilian in the USA, President Obama said: “Reconnaissance satellites, the MRI, GPS technology, the touchscreen all bear his fingerprints….Dick has advised nearly every president since Eisenhower, often rather bluntly. Enrico Fermi, also a pretty smart guy, is reported to have called Dick the only true genius he ever met.”