Richard L Garwin

Richard L. Garwin, an architect of America’s hydrogen bomb, who shaped defense policies for postwar governments and laid the groundwork for insights into the structure of the universe as well as for computer marvels like touch-screen monitors, died on Tuesday May 13 2025 at his home in Scarsdale, N.Y. He was 97. Garwin was only 23 when he built the world’s first fusion bomb. He later became a science adviser to many presidents, and designed Pentagon weapons and satellite reconnaissance systems. His mentor, the Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, called him “the only true genius I have ever met.” In 1951-52, however, Dr. Garwin, at the time an instructor at the University of Chicago and just a summer consultant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1952 he have returned to the University of Chicago, where he had earned his doctorate under Fermi and was now an assistant professor, with the promise of life at one of the nation’s most prestigious academic institutions. Or he could accept a far more flexible job at the International Business Machines Corporation. He chose to join IBM and stayed for four decades, until his retirement.. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1947 from what is now Case Western Reserve University. Under Fermi’s tutelage at the University of Chicago, Dr. Garwin earned a master’s degree in 1948 and a doctorate in 1949. He held faculty appointments at Harvard and Cornell as well as Columbia. In 1947, he married Lois Levy. She died in 2018. In addition to his son Thomas, he is survived by another son, Jeffrey; a daughter, Laura; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.