Herman Kahn

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Herman Kahn was an American physicist.

Early life

Kahn was born in New Jersey and grew up in the Bronx until his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Los Angeles. After graduating from High School in 1940, he studied Physics at the University of California at Los Angeles, before serving in the Pacific theater of World War Two.[1]

Rand Corporation

Through his friend Sam Cohen, the physicist who invented the neutron bomb, Kahn got a job at the RAND Corporation in 1947, remaining there until 1961.[2]

In the early 1950s, Kahn came under investigation from the FBI, because of allegations that his wife Rosalie Jane Heilner had family links to Communists, and because an FBI informant linked him to an alleged Communist front, the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born.[3]

In the mid-1950s, Kahn was advisor to the Gaither Committee on security resources.[4]

In 1960, Kahn published On Thermonuclear War.[4]

Hudson Institute

After leaving RAND, Kahn founded the Hudson Institute in New York with a $1 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.[5]

Kahn died in 1983.[6]

External resources

Affiliations


Notes

  1. Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire, Mariner Books, 2009, pp.96-97.
  2. Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire, Mariner Books, 2009, pp.97.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire, Mariner Books, 2009, pp.98.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire, Mariner Books, 2009, pp.101.
  5. Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire, Mariner Books, 2009, pp.103.
  6. Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire, Mariner Books, 2009, pp.104.