Biography

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Barack Obama, in a live televised ceremony held in the East Room of the White House, on November 22, 2016, along with twenty other recipients, the the largest, and final Medal of Freedom ceremony of Obama's presidency. At this ceremony, the twenty-one recipients, in alphabetical order, included: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elouise Cobell (posthumous award given to her son), Ellen DeGeneres, Robert De Niro, Richard Garwin, Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Frank Gehry, Margaret Hamilton (as Margaret H. Hamilton), Tom Hanks, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (posthumous award given to her niece), Michael Jordan, Maya Lin, Lorne Michaels, Newton Minow, Eduardo Padron (as Eduardo Padrón), Robert Redford, Diana Ross, Vin Scully, Bruce Springsteen, and Cicely Tyson.

At age 23 and at the behest of Edward Teller, Garwin designed the very first working hydrogen bomb, which was referred to as "the Sausage." It was detonated in a test code-named Ivy Mike at Enewetak Atoll in November 1952, yielding 10.4 megatons of TNT.

Starting in the early 1950s and continuing in parallel with his career at IBM, Garwin also served as an advisor or consultant to U.S. government agencies on some of the most vital tech-related issues, and some of the most prestigious panels, of his times.

In 1949, after earning his Ph.D., he taught in the Physics Department at UChicago and worked as a consultant at the Los Alamos laboratory.

After earning a degree in Physics from Case Western University, Garwin went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.