Listings of all CNS staff with areas of expertise, contact information, biographies, and recent publications.

Updated: Mar 5, 2012

Dr. Gregg Herken

Senior Fellow

Activities

Dr. Gregg Herken is a Senior Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS).

Background

Dr. Gregg Herken is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California, and was a Founding Faculty member at the University of California's new campus, in Merced, California, which opened in 2003. He received a Ph.D. in modern American diplomatic history from Princeton University in 1974, and subsequent taught at Oberlin College, Yale University, and Caltech. From 1988-2003, Herken was a senior Historian and Curator, as well as the chairman of the Department of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Outside the academic and museum worlds, Herken served as an Intern Analyst on the Soviet Internal Affairs desk of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1971, and was later detailed as a Senior Research and Policy Analyst to President Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, at the request of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Bibliography

He is the author of four books:

• The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War (Knopf, 1981; Princeton, 1988)
• Counsels of War (Knopf, 1985; Oxford, 1986)
• Cardinal Choices: Presidential Science Advising from the Atomic Bomb to SDI (Oxford, 1992; Stanford, 1999)
• Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (Henry Holt, 2002; Holt, 2003); which was a finalist for the 2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History

He is currently at work on a new book, which is under contract with Knopf/Vintage, and is scheduled for publication in 2013. The working title is The Georgetown Set: The Washington Insiders Who Waged-and Won-the Cold War.

He is the author of the following essays and articles:

• "Target Enormoz: Soviet Nuclear Espionage on the West Coast of the United States, 1942-1950," Journal of Cold War Studies, Summer 2009
• "Enormoz Espionage," The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, Cynthia Kelly [ed.], (Leventhal Publishers, 2007)
• "Was Robert Oppenheimer a 'Closet Communist'?: The Debate and the Evidence," C. Carson and D.A. Hollinger [eds.], Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections (Office for History of Science and Technology, UC Berkeley, Oct. 2005)
• "'Not Enough Bulldozers': Eisenhower and American Nuclear Weapons Policy, 1953-1961," Dennis Showalter [ed.], Forging the Shield: Eisenhower and National Security in the 21st Century (Imprint Publications, 2005)
• "Artifacts of Early Nuclear Strategy," The Most Dangerous Years: The Cold War, 1953-1975 (Virginia Military Institute Press, 2005)
• "Science in the Service of the State: The Cautionary Tale of Robert Oppenheimer," in C.C. Kelly [ed.], Remembering the Manhattan Project: Perspectives on the Making of the Atomic Bomb and Its Legacy (World Scientific Publishers, 2004)
• "The Oppenheimer Case: An Exchange with Gregg Herken," New York Review of Books, March 2004
• "In the Service of the State: Science and the Cold War," Diplomatic History, Winter 2000

He has done book reviews including:

• "A Mixed Legacy: Judging Edward Teller, American Scientist, March-April 2011
• "Dr. Strangelove's Workplace," Washington Post Book World, June 2008
• "Arms and the Men," Boston Globe Ideas & Books, November 2007
• "J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life," Technology & Culture, October 2007
• "Five Days in August," Journal of Military History, October 2007
• "Doomsday Men: Mankind's Strange Love of Superweapons," Nature, August 2007
• "The Finger on the Button," Nonproliferation Review, July 2007
• "At the Abyss," Journal of Cold War Studies, February 2007
• "Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma," Journal of Cold War Studies, January 2007
• "Top Secret: The Jasons," American Scientist, September 2006
• "An Explosion in the Desert," Science, November 2005