Lawrence Badash

Lawrence Badash (May 8, 1934, Brooklyn – August 23, 2010, Santa Barbara, California) was an American professor of the history of physical sciences, specializing in the history of physics, particularly the history of nuclear physics and nuclear weapons.

Education and career Badash graduated in 1956 with a B.S. in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he was a Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) student. After serving three years as a naval aviator, he became a graduate in the physics department of Yale University but soon switched to the history of science. He became Derek de Solla Price's first doctoral student. Badash received his Ph.D. in 1964 and his Ph.D. thesis was eventually published in 1979 as the monograph Radioactivity in America: Growth and Decay of a Science. In the history department of the University of California, Santa Barbara, he taught the history of the physical sciences. He joined the department in 1966 and retired as professor emeritus in 2002. He was elected in 1984 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and in 1987 a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He served as president of the Santa Barbara chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU from 1982 to 1988 and from 1996 to 1999.

(pbk reprint of 1980 original)