Martin J. Sherwin

Martin Jay Sherwin (July 2, 1937 – October 6, 2021) was an American historian. His scholarship mostly concerned the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation. He served on the faculty at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Berkeley, and as the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University, where he founded the Nuclear Age History and Humanities Center.

Early life and education Sherwin was born on July 2, 1937, in Brooklyn, New York, to Mimi (nee Karp) and Harold Sherwin. His mother was a homemaker who also worked administrative jobs while his father was a children's clothing manufacturer. He graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn after which he enrolled in Dartmouth College aiming to pursue medicine. However, he went on to study geology and philosophy, eventually graduating in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. Sherwin earned his PhD in history at the University of California, Los Angeles. His doctoral thesis, studying Harry S. Truman's atomic strategy, became his first book, A World Destroyed.

Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis was published in October 2020 and received positive reviews from The New York Times Book Review and Booklist, among others.

Sherwin served on the board of The Nation, to which he was a regular contributor.

Works A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies (various editions, 1975, 1987, 2003) American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, (2005), with Kai Bird Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis (2020)

Personal life Sherwin was married to Susan (née Smukler), with whom he lived in Washington, D.C., and Aspen, Colorado. They had a son and a daughter; his daughter pre-deceased him in 2010. He died in Washington on October 6, 2021, of lung cancer.