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Herbert F. York
(24 Nov 1921 - 19 May 2009)
American nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project in the development of the atomic bomb. He was the first director of Defense Research and Engineering, overseeing missile and space research. Later became an arms-control advocate.
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Science Quotes by Herbert F. York (3 quotes)
There is no such thing as a good nuclear weapons system. There is no way to achieve, in the sound sense, national security through nuclear weapons.
— Herbert F. York
Quoted from interview (1983) in 'Herbert York dies at 87', L.A. Times (21 May 2009)
To most ... of us, Russia was as mysterious and remote as the other side of the moon and not much more productive when it came to really new ideas or inventions. A common joke of the time [mid 1940s] said that the Russians could not surreptitiously introduce nuclear bombs in suitcases into the United States because they had not yet been able to perfect a suitcase.
— Herbert F. York
In Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), 760.
We seem to be heading for a state of affairs in which the determination of whether or not Doomsday has arrived will be made either by an automatic device ... or by a pre-programmed president who, whether he knows it or not, will be carrying out orders written years before by some operations analyst.
— Herbert F. York
In The Race to Oblivion, (1970), 232.
See also:
- 24 Nov - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of York's birth.
- Arms and the Physicist, by Herbert F. York. - book suggestion.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
