Siegfried Hecker’s Interview – Part 2
Siegfried Hecker is an American scientist who served as the Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 to 1997. He is currently Professor (Research) of Management Science and Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His acceptance of the directorship of Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1986 was preceded by the Reykjavik Summit and unprecedented discussions of disarmament. In this interview, he discusses the obstacles to and immense gains from working with Russian nuclear scientists at the end of the Cold War. Specifically, he describes his involvement in the joint-verification experiments carried out in Nevada and at the Russian nuclear facility in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.