Sidney D. Drell
Senior Fellow

Expertise: Theoretical physics, national security, arms control

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Sidney D. Drell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor of theoretical physics (emeritus) at Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where he served at deputy director until retiring in 1998. An arms control specialist, he has advised the executive and legislative branches of government on national security and defense technical issues for more than four decades. From 1983 to 1989, he was the founding codirector of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Arms Control.

He is active in JASON, a group of scientists who act as consultants to the government on issues of national importance, and a member of the governing boards that currently manage the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.

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.

In 2006 Drell, together with former secretary of state George P. Shultz, initiated a program at the Hoover Institution that would initiate steps toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

In recognition of his achievements, Drell has received numerous awards, including the Enrico Fermi Award, the nation's oldest award in science and technology, a fellowship fromthe MacArthur Foundation, the Heinz Award for contributions in public policy, the Rumford Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. Drell was one of ten scientists honored as “founders of national reconnaissance as a space discipline” by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society and was president of the American Physical Society in 1986.

Drell received his AB from Princeton University, his PhD from the University of Illinois in physics, and honorary degrees from the University of Illinois, the Weizmann Institute of Science, and the University of Tel Aviv.