Oral Histories

Glenn Schweitzer is the director of the Program on Central Europe and Eurasia at the National Academy of Sciences. In this interview, Schweitzer discusses his distinguished career in international scientific cooperation. He began as a Foreign Service Officer in Yugoslavia before moving on to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and then the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Schweitzer later worked for the Environmental Protection Agency at the Nevada Test Site. From 1992-1994, he served as the first director of the newly created International Science and Technology Center in Moscow. Schweitzer extensively explains the lessons and legacies of these scientific cooperation efforts, including their applicability to dealing with current issues with Iran and North Korea.

Siegfried Hecker is an American nuclear scientist who served as the director of Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 to 1997. Today, he is professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. In this interview, Hecker describes how his family immigrated to the United States from Austria in 1956. He then discusses his time at Los Alamos, including his scientific work and directorship, which took place as the Cold War was coming to a close. Hecker reflects on the American-Russian collaboration funded by the Nunn-Lugar Act during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as the nuclear disarmament of former Soviet republics. He also notes the challenges that American and Russian nuclear scientists face in trying to collaborate today. Hecker also discusses his work on China, Pakistan, Iran, India, and North Korea, where he made seven trips between 2004 and 2010.

Gordon Fee is the retired president of Lockheed Martin Energy Systems and the former manager of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, TN. He began working at Oak Ridge at the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant in 1956. In this interview, he describes his career at Oak Ridge, and shares stories about his work at Y-12 and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In particular, he focuses on scientific developments connected with Oak Ridge, including the growth of the Nuclear Navy, the use of radioisotopes in medicine, and more. He also discusses the challenges of trying to explain Oak Ridge’s complex history to the public.

Justin Baba is a researcher and biomedical engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Born in Nigeria, he moved to the United States to attend college and has worked at ORNL since 2003. In this interview, Baba explains how he became interested in science and medical research. He also describes some of the projects he has worked on at ORNL, including efforts to create functional imaging of the brain and imaging of plants as part of research into renewable energy sources.

Liane B. Russell is a renowned geneticist. Born in Vienna, Austria, she and her family managed to flee the country after its annexation by Nazi Germany. After moving to the United States, Russell became interested in biological research. In 1947, she and her husband, William L. Russell, moved to Oak Ridge. In this interview, Russell explains her experiments on the effects of radiation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s “Mouse House,” including the discovery that the Y chromosome is sex-determining. She describes her work with the environmental movement and the efforts of Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, which she co-founded. She also recalls winning the Enrico Fermi Award from the Department of Energy and a visit to communist East Germany in the 1980s.