Frank von Hippel

Frank von Hippel is co-Director of Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security. One of our foremost academic technical specialists in arms control and nonproliferation issues, he is also a seasoned policy veteran. In the 1980s, as Chairman of the Federation of American Scientists, von Hippel partnered with his Soviet counterpart, Academician Evgenyi Velikhov, in advising Gorbachev on the technical basis for steps to end the Cold War nuclear arms race and, in the process, persuading the Soviet leader to embrace the idea of a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty.

In 1994, he served as assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, followed by a stint as senior advisor to the Director of the Office of Nonproliferation and Arms Control at the Department of Energy.

Von Hippel has played a leadership role in all the major U.S. arms control organizations, including the Federation of American Scientists, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Arms Control Association. In addition, his formative efforts in launching cooperative U.S.-Russian programs on nuclear materials nonproliferation and protection was recognized in his appointment to the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology's Center for Arms Control, Energy, and Environmental Studies.