{"id":28040,"date":"2025-05-19T13:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T13:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28040"},"modified":"2025-05-19T14:33:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T14:33:49","slug":"dick-garwin-fought-nuclear-armageddon-he-hid-a-50-year-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28040","title":{"rendered":"Dick Garwin Fought Nuclear Armageddon. He Hid a 50-Year Secret."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Enrico Fermi\u2019s battle with cancer was nearing its end in late 1954 when he received a visitor.<\/p>\n

Fermi, a Nobel laureate in physics, had fled fascism in Europe and become a founder of the nuclear age<\/a>, helping bring the world\u2019s first reactor and first atom bomb to life.<\/p>\n

The visitor, Richard L. Garwin<\/a>, had been Fermi\u2019s student at the University of Chicago, the laureate calling him<\/a> \u201cthe only true genius I have ever met.\u201d Now, he had done something known at the time only by Fermi and a handful of other experts. Not even his family knew. Three years earlier, the boy wonder, then 23, had designed the world\u2019s first hydrogen bomb, which brought the fury of the stars to Earth.<\/p>\n

In a test, it had exploded with a force nearly 1,000 times as powerful<\/a> as the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima, its power greater than all the explosives used in World War II.<\/p>\n

To his reverential student, Fermi confided a regret<\/a>. He felt his life had involved too little participation in crucial issues of public policy. He died<\/a> a few weeks later at 53.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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After that visit, Dr. Garwin set out on a new path, seeing nuclear scientists<\/a> as having a responsibility to speak out. His resolve, he later told a historian<\/a>, came from a desire to honor the memory of the scientist he had known best and admired most.<\/p>\n

\u201cI modeled myself to whatever extent I could after Fermi,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Garwin, the designer of the world\u2019s deadliest weapon, died last Tuesday<\/a> at age 97, leaving behind a legacy of nuclear horrors he devoted his life to countering. But he also left a strange puzzle.<\/p>\n

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Enrico Fermi\u2019s battle with cancer was nearing its end in late 1954 when he received a visitor.Fermi, a Nobel laureate in physics, had fled fascism in Europe and become a founder of the nuclear age, helping bring the world\u2019s first reactor and first atom bomb to life.The visitor, Richard L. Garwin, had been Fermi\u2019s student at the University of Chicago, the laureate calling him \u201cthe only true genius I have ever met.\u201d Now, he had done something known at the time only by Fermi and a handful of other experts. Not even his family knew. Three years earlier, the boy wonder, then 23, had designed the world\u2019s first hydrogen bomb, which brought the fury of the stars to Earth.In a test, it had exploded with a force nearly 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima, its power greater than all the explosives used in World War II.To his reverential student, Fermi confided a regret. He felt his life had involved too little participation in crucial issues of public policy. He died a few weeks later at 53.After that visit, Dr. Garwin set out on a new path, seeing nuclear scientists as having a responsibility to speak out. His resolve, he later told a historian, came from a desire to honor the memory of the scientist he had known best and admired most.\u201cI modeled myself to whatever extent I could after Fermi,\u201d he said.Dr. Garwin, the designer of the world\u2019s deadliest weapon, died last Tuesday at age 97, leaving behind a legacy of nuclear horrors he devoted his life to countering. But he also left a strange puzzle.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28042,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28040"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28043,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28040\/revisions\/28043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}