ANS Eisenhower Award Honors Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz & Distinguished Physicist Dr. Sidney D. Drell

October 27, 2015, 3:27PMANS Nuclear CafeLenka Kollar

On Monday morning of November 9, during the Opening Plenary at the 2015 American Nuclear Society's Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., the first Dwight D. Eisenhower Award will be awarded to former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and distinguished physicist Dr. Sidney D. Drell. This award was established in 2014 by ANS's Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) to honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of the field of nuclear nonproliferation. It is named after the late Dwight D. Eisenhower, a pioneer who helped nurture the nuclear age to technical and political maturity.

Shultz and Drell are both distinguished fellows at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 2006, they started a program at Hoover that would initiate steps toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Their latest co-edited publication is The Nuclear Enterprise: High-Consequence Accidents: How to Enhance Safety and Minimize Risks in Nuclear Weapons and Reactors.

Shultz is currently the chairman of the Energy Policy Task Force at the Hoover Institution. He held two key positions in the Reagan administration: chairman of the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981-1982) and Secretary of State (1982-1989). As Secretary of State, he played a key role in implementing a foreign policy that led to the successful conclusion of the Cold War and the development of strong relationships between the United States and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

Drell is currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of theoretical physics emeritus at Stanford's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where he served as deputy director until retiring in 1998. An arms control specialist, he has advised the executive and legislative branches of government on national security and technical defense issues for more than four decades.

Drell also served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the President's Science Advisory Committee. He chaired the Panel on Nuclear Weapons Safety of the House Armed Services Committee, the Technology Review Panel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senior Review Board of the Intelligence Community's Technology Innovation Center.

A technical session at the upcoming ANS Winter Meeting will honor these two men and review the past three decades of their achievements in the nuclear field. Current day situations and the outlook for the future in the field of nuclear nonproliferation will also be discussed at this session. Join us at the 2015 Dwight D. Eisenhower Award Special Session Panel on Monday, November 9 at 1:00 p.m. at the Wardman Park Marriott in Washington, D.C.


Lenka Kollar is the Owner & Editor of Nuclear Undone focusing on informing the public about nuclear energy and nonproliferation issues. She is an active ANS member, serving on the Executive Committee of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division and member of the Professional Women in ANS Committee. Connect with Lenka on LinkedIn and Twitter.