Siegfried Hecker
Siegfried S. Hecker (born October 2, 1943 in Tomaszew , Poland ) is an American metallurgist. He was director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) from 1986 to 1997 and is a plutonium expert.
Hecker's parents were from Sarajevo and were relocated to Poland during World War II. He lost his father in the war on the Eastern Front. He came to the USA via Austria in 1956 with his mother, who had remarried. Hecker studied metallurgy at Case Western Reserve University with a bachelor's degree in 1965, a master's degree in 1967 and a doctorate in 1968. He was a post-doctoral student at Los Alamos National Laboratory .
From 1970 Hecker was at the General Motors Research Laboratories and then again at the Los Alamos Laboratory, where he headed materials science and was director of the laboratory from 1986 to 1997.
Until 2005 he was also a Senior Fellow of the laboratory. In 2005 he was visiting professor at Stanford University and from 2007 to 2012 he was co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in Stanford.
As a metallurgist, he resolved an important question about the stability of certain equilibrium phases of plutonium alloys after discrepancies emerged in Soviet and American research.
He was a consultant to the Nuclear Threat Initiative and has been visiting the Nyŏngbyŏn nuclear facility in North Korea on an unofficial mission since 2004 to evaluate its nuclear status (as was the case in 2010, when he reported on the advanced status of the facility).
As director of LANL in the 1990s, he campaigned for cooperation with Soviet nuclear weapons specialists to ensure the safety of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal after the end of the Soviet Union.
Prizes and awards
In 2012 he received the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award , in 1984 the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Prize and in 2009 the Enrico Fermi Prize . He also received the Glenn Seaborg Medal from the American Nuclear Society . In 2002 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
Web links
- Homepage in Stanford
- Interview with Richard Rhodes
- Publications by Siegfried S. Hecker at the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information
- Gregor Peter Schmitz, Wieland Wagner and Bernhard Zand: NORTH KOREA: The big bang - Spiegel, February 18, 2013
Individual evidence
- ^ LA National Laboratory: Reflections (Issue about S. Hecker) . August – September 1997. Retrieved November 23, 2010.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hecker, Siegfried |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hecker, Siegfried S. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American metallurgist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 2, 1943 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tomaszew , Poland |