November 18] 1900 – December 7, 1982) was a Ukrainian-American physical chemistry professor at Harvard who participated in the Manhattan Project and later served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Science Advisor.

He made his way to Germany, where he earned his PhD in physical chemistry under the supervision of Max Bodenstein at the University of Berlin.

He severed his connections with the government in protest against the war in Vietnam, and became active in an antiwar organization, the Council for a Livable World, becoming its chairman in 1977.

George Bogdanovich Kistiakowsky was born in Boyarka,[1] in the Kyiv Governorate of the Russian Empire (now part of Ukraine), on December 1 [O.S.

[5] His father Bogdan Kistiakovsky was a professor of legal philosophy at the University of Kyiv,[4] and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1919.

[4] In 1925, he earned his PhD in physical chemistry under the supervision of Max Bodenstein, writing his thesis on the photochemical decomposition of chlorine monoxide and ozone.

[15] Foreseeing an expanded role for science in World War II, which the United States had not yet joined, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) on June 27, 1940, with Vannevar Bush as its chairman.

James B. Conant, the President of Harvard,[16] was appointed head of Division B, which was responsible for bombs, fuels, gases, and chemicals.

RDX was also mixed with TNT to produce Composition B, which was widely used in various munitions, and torpex, which was used in torpedoes and depth charges.

[25][26] In addition to research into synthetic explosives like RDX and HMX, the ERL investigated the properties of detonations and shock waves.

Kistiakowsky visited England in 1941 and again in 1942, where he met with British experts, including William Penney and Geoffrey Taylor.

When Kistiakowsky and Edgar Bright Wilson, Jr., surveyed the existing state of knowledge, they found several areas that warranted further investigation.

[29] At the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory, research into implosion had been proceeding under Seth Neddermeyer, but his division had worked with cylinders and small charges, and had produced only objects that looked like rocks.

Their research was accorded a low priority, owing to expectations that a gun-type nuclear weapon design would work for both uranium-235 and plutonium, and implosion technology would not be required.

After reviewing Neddermeyer's studies, and discussing the matter with Edward Teller, von Neumann suggested the use of high explosive in shaped charges to implode a sphere, which he showed could not only result in a faster assembly of fissile material than was possible with the gun method, but greatly reduce the amount of material required.

The prospect of more efficient nuclear weapons impressed Oppenheimer, Teller and Hans Bethe, but they decided that an expert on explosives was required.

[30] Kistiakowsky was initially reluctant to come, "partly because", he later explained, "I didn't think the bomb would be ready in time and I was interested in helping to win the war".

As with other aspects of the Manhattan Project, research into explosive lenses followed multiple lines of inquiry simultaneously because, as Kistiakowsky noted, it was "impossible to predict which of these basic techniques will be the more successful.

"[31] Kistiakowsky brought with him to Los Alamos a detailed knowledge of all the studies into shaped charges, of explosives like Composition B, and of the procedures used at the ERL in 1942 and 1943.

[30] The implosion program acquired a new urgency after Emilio Segrè's group at Los Alamos verified that plutonium produced in the nuclear reactors contained plutonium-240, which made it unsuitable for use in a gun-type weapon.

[34] Under Kistiakowsky's leadership, X-Division designed the complex explosive lenses needed to compress the fissile plutonium pit.

[40] In 1957, during the Eisenhower Administration, Kistiakowsky was appointed to the President's Science Advisory Committee, and succeeded James R. Killian as chairman in 1959.

[41] In 1958, Kistiakowsky suggested to President Eisenhower that inspection of foreign military facilities was not sufficient to control their nuclear weapons.

He cited the difficulty in monitoring missile submarines, and proposed that the arms control strategy focus on disarmament rather than inspections.

This example of the "national means of technical verification", a euphemism for sensitive intelligence collection used in arms control, would provide safeguards, without raising the on-site inspection requirement to a level unacceptable to the Soviets.

Initially, Kistiakowsky was not given access, and Eisenhower sent him back, with a much stronger set of orders for SAC officers to cooperate.

Kistiakowsky's report, presented on November 29, described uncoordinated plans with huge numbers of targets, many of which would be attacked by multiple forces, resulting in overkill.

[51] He received several awards over the years, including the Department of the Air Force Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service in 1957.