Albert Louis Latter (October 17, 1921,

Kokomo, Indiana Kokomo ( ) is a city in Indiana and the county seat of Howard County, Indiana, United States. It is the principal city of the Kokomo, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Howard County, the Kokomo-Peru CSA, which includ ...

– June 8, 1997, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles) was an American nuclear physicist and leading expert on nuclear weapons.

Biography

Latter graduated from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(UCLA) with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics in 1941 and with a Ph.D. in physics in 1951. Immediately after receiving his Ph.D. he joined the Santa Monica headquarters of

RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...

, where for the next twenty years he worked on nuclear weapons. In the 1950s Albert Latter and Edward Teller worked together on the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, where Teller attended his first meeting as a member in early 1952 at the invitation of his old friend

Theodore von Karman Theodore may refer to: Places * Theodore, Alabama, United States * Theodore, Australian Capital Territory * Theodore, Queensland, a town in the Shire of Banana, Australia * Theodore, Saskatchewan, Canada * Theodore Reservoir, a lake in Saskatche ...

. Teller and Latter were the co-authors of the controversial book ''Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers, and Opportunities'', published in 1958 by Criterion Books. Albert Latter's brother Richard Latter (1923–1999) was also a noteworthy physicist and they worked together at RAND. In 1971 Albert Latter resigned from RAND and, together his brother Richard and most of RAND's physics department, founded in

Marina del Rey Marina del Rey (Spanish for "Marina of the King") is an unincorporated seaside community in Los Angeles County, California, with an eponymous harbor that is a major boating and water recreation destination of the greater Los Angeles area. The p ...

the defense research company R&D Associates (RDA) which was acquired in 1983 by Logicon Inc., which became a subsidiary of

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...

in 1997. Albert Latter was the president and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of R&D Associates until his retirement in 1985. He received the 1964 Ernest O. Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission "for contributions in the determination of the destructive effects as well as in the decoupling of nuclear explosions and in the design of nuclear weapons." Upon his death Albert Latter was survived by his wife, two daughter, and three grandchildren.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Latter, Albert L. 1921 births 1997 deaths 20th-century American physicists American nuclear physicists American theoretical physicists University of California, Los Angeles alumni RAND Corporation people