Herbert York

Herbert York (1957)

Herbert Frank York (born November 24, 1921 in Rochester , New York , † May 19, 2009 in San Diego , California ) was an American nuclear physicist who held numerous high scientific and administrative positions.

Life

York graduated from the University of Rochester (Masters degree in 1942) and received his PhD in 1949 from the University of California, Berkeley . During the Second World War he worked at the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on electromagnetic uranium enrichment (see also Calutron ). From 1943 he was a member of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley University, where he was Associate Director from 1954 to 1958. 1952 to 1958 he was the first director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , where he was involved, among other things, in the development of the hydrogen bomb, and at the same time from 1951 Assistant Professor at the University of Berkeley. After that he was u. a. from 1958 chief scientist of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) (concerned with space and missile defense research), from 1965 professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and chancellor of the University of California, San Diego from 1961 to 1964 and from 1970 to 1972. In 1971 York was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1989 he retired.

Initially one of the leading scientific nuclear weapons developers and nuclear weapons consultants to the Eisenhower administration, he later became a staunch supporter of disarmament after realizing that mutual nuclear armament and automated response mechanisms to nuclear threats endangered security. For example, in the 1960s he was an advisor to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and under Jimmy Carter from 1979 to 1982 a delegate in the disarmament talks with the Soviet Union in Geneva and unsuccessfully negotiated on behalf of the United Nations on a test ban agreement with the Soviet Union. In 1983 he founded the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation in San Diego, of which he was director until 1988.

1957/58 and 1964 to 1967 he was on the President's Scientific Advisory Committee (PSAC). In 1994 he received the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award and in 2000 the Enrico Fermi Prize .

Works (selection)

Arms Control. Readings from Scientific American . 2nd ed. WH Freeman, San Francisco 1974, ISBN 0-7167-0880-9 .
The Advisors. Oppenheimer , Teller and the Superbomb . WH Freeman, San Francisco 1976, ISBN 0-7167-0718-7 .
Race to Oblivion. A Participant's View of the Arms Race . Simon & Schuster, New York 1978, ISBN 0-671-20610-9 .
Making Weapons, Talking Peace. A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to Geneva (Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Series). Harper & Row, New York 1987, ISBN 0-465-04338-0 .
with Sanford Lakoff: A Shield in Space? Technology. Politics and the Strategic Defense Initiative (Californian Studies on global conflict and cooperation; Vol. 1). UC Press, Berkeley 1988, ISBN 0-520-06650-2 .
Arms and the Physicist (Master of modern Physics; Vol. 12). American Physical Society, Woodbury, NY 1994, ISBN 1-563-96099-0 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	York, Herbert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	York, Herbert Frank (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American nuclear physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	November 24, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH	Rochester (New York) , USA
DATE OF DEATH	May 19, 2009
Place of death	San Diego , California, USA