Albert James Wohlstetter was an American nuclear strategist, theorist, educator and author, who advised Democratic and Republican Administrations on military strategy.
Background
Ethnicity:
Albert Wohlstetter's paternal grandparents were cosmopolitan Jews who immigrated to the United States from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Albert James Wohlstetter was born on 19 December 1913, the fourth and youngest child of Philip Wohlstetter and Nellie (née Friedman). He was raised in the Washington Heights neighbourhood of Manhattan. His father died of a heart attack in 1918 when Albert was four years old.
Education
Wohlstetter earned a bachelor's degree from City College of New York in 1934 and, in 1938, a master's degree, in mathematical logic from Columbia University. He then stayed at Columbia to pursue a doctorate in mathematical logic and philosophy of science, but when the Second World War started to work for the U.S. government on war planning, he left Columbia's graduate program and never completed his doctorate.
During the Second World War, Wohlstetter worked on problems of war production. He was first hired by the Planning Committee of the War Production Board. Later he worked at Atlas Aircraft Products Company.
After the war, Wohlstetter worked briefly in business in New York. He moved back to Washington, D.C. to serve as the director of programs for the National Housing Agency in 1946 and 1947.
In 1950, he started working at Rand Corporation. At Rand, he researched how to posture and operate U.S. strategic nuclear forces to deter plausible forms of Soviet nuclear-armed aggression in a way that was credible, cost-effective and controllable.
In 1962, Wohlstetter started teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, and from 1964 to 1980, he taught in the political science department of the University of Chicago.
Since then Wohlstetter held the position of president and director research at Personal Area Networks Heuristics Superior vena cava syndrome Inc. till his death in 1997.
Wohlstetter gained prominence as a strategic analyst for his work with nuclear armaments. As a researcher for the Rand Corp., Wohlstetter conducted studies for the U.S. Department of Defense and provided options for the security of the United States in case of a first-strike nuclear attack. In addition to his research, Wohlstetter and his wife, Roberta, who were considered experts on the issue of national security, advised president John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. They also advised President Ronald Reagan about the placement of weapons. For this work, they were awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest honour bestowed upon citizens of the United States. Wohlstetter also wrote articles for political journals. His “Scientists, Seers, and Strategy” appeared in Foreign Policy. He is also credited with writing Systems Analysts Versus Systems Design, Race Differences in Income (with Sinclair Coleman), Nuclear Policies: Fuel without the Bomb; A Policy Study of the California Seminar on Arms Control and Foreign Policy (with others), and Discriminate Deterrence: Report of the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy (with Fred C. Ikle), among others.
