Sidney Drell, Who Advised Presidents on Nuclear Weapons, Dies at 90 (original) (raw)

Science|Sidney Drell, Who Advised Presidents on Nuclear Weapons, Dies at 90

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/science/sidney-drell-dead.html

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Sidney D. Drell received the National Medal of Science from President Obama in 2013 for his contributions to physics and the government.Credit...Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

Dec. 22, 2016

Sidney D. Drell, a physicist who served for nearly half a century as a top adviser to the United States government on military technology and arms control, died on Wednesday at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Persis Drell.

Dr. Drell combined groundbreaking work in particle physics — he was deputy director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, now the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, for nearly 30 years — with a career in Washington as a technical adviser and defense intellectual.

In 2000, he was given the Enrico Fermi Award for his life’s work, and in 2013, President Obama presented him with the National Medal of Science for his contributions to physics and his service to the government.

Beginning in 1960, as the Cold War heated up, Dr. Drell served on a succession of advisory groups that helped advance the technology of nuclear detection and shape the policy of nuclear deterrence.

As a founding member of the Jason defense advisory group, a panel of defense scientists, he helped develop the McNamara Line, a barrier that was intended to halt the infiltration of soldiers and weapons into South Vietnam from the north through a system that combined electronic surveillance with mines and troop concentrations at strategic points.

Dr. Drell was a strong proponent of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. “I believed that given the Soviet empire, its stated goals and existence, we had to deter them,” he said in an interview for “The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb” (2012), a book by Philip Taubman, a former reporter and editor for The New York Times.

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