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Robinson, C. Paul
Oral history interview with C. Paul Robinson, 2021 March 26.
Interview with Ambassador C. Paul Robinson, retired as President of Sandia Corporation. He discusses his advisory work since retirement, and the various ways he has remained connected to Sandia. He recounts his childhood in Memphis and his early interests in physics, and he describes the opportunities that led to his graduate research at Florida State University. Robinson describes his thesis work under the direction of Robert H. Davis, who headed the nuclear accelerator laboratory, where he worked on alpha particle scattering on Calcium 40. He describes his interest in pursuing postgraduate work at Los Alamos, and he explains how the academic and the national security sides of the Lab worked to mutual benefit. He describes the Labs early work in internal fusion and laser-induced chemistry, and his steadily rising responsibilities at the Lab, including that for the design and certification of nuclear weapons. Robinson discusses his work on nuclear strategy and policy, and he explains the difference between mutually assured destruction and maintaining a second-strike capability. He explains his decision to leave Los Alamos in 1985, and the circumstances leading to him becoming Head of the US Delegation and Ambassador and Chief Negotiator during nuclear testing talks with the Soviet Union. Robinson discusses how the end of the Cold War reformulated U.S. nuclear weapons policy, and the circumstances that led to him joining Sandia. He conveys his pride in Sandias leadership work on technology transfer and applying supercomputing toward energy security. At the end of the interview, Robinson reflects on what he has learned in his career in U.S. national security policy, and he speculates on the threats the U.S. faces in an uncertain future.
Ambassador C. Paul Robinson is the retired President of Sandia Corporation. He completed his graduate studies at Florida State University and held a postdoctoral appointment at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked for several years. Robinson served as head of the U.S. delegation and chief negotiator in the Nuclear Testing Talks with the USSR.
Agnew, Harold M.
Bethe, Hans A. (Hans Albrecht), 1906-2005
Casey, William J.
Dyson, Freeman J.
Garwin, Richard L.
Kerr, Donald M.
Plendl, Hans S.
Florida State University
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Sandia Corporation.
Sandia National Laboratories
Chemical lasers
Cold War -- Diplomatic history.
International relations.
Laser spectroscopy
National security
Nuclear engineering.
Nuclear weapons
Photochemistry
Scattering (Physics).
Supercomputers
Tunable lasers. fast
Uranium enrichment.
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA
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