He is best remembered as a scientific advisor to the Allies on bombing strategy in the Second World War, for his work to advance the cause of nuclear non-proliferation, and for his role in bringing attention to global economic issues.

[12] Zuckerman's suggestion, made when he was Scientific Director of the British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU),[13] and accepted by Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder and Supreme Allied Commander U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower in the lead-up to the Normandy landings, that the Allies concentrate on disrupting the German-controlled French transportation system through heavy aerial bombing of rail lines and marshalling yards, was officially called the Transportation Plan,[14] but was privately referred to by its opponents as "Zuckerman's Folly".

[15] A focus of Zuckerman's plan, learned in Italy, was to target locomotives and the capacity to service them due to a shortage in France prior to the Normandy campaign.

This had the effect of pushing railheads back from the front causing trucks to be diverted from a role of manoeuvre to one of logistics, which resulted in greater petrol consumption.

[26] He is also credited for making science a normal part of government policy in the Western world and wrote many articles on this topic, including some formal lectures, collected in Beyond the Ivory Tower.

There Zuckerman wrote about the role of science in policy, and how it developed in public (i.e. large funded collaborations) and in private (i.e. behind closed doors in laboratories).

This led to a concern about the policy for investing in science, or Foresight, which could not, in his view, expect to know what scientific discovery was likely to occur, and therefore how to choose projects for funding.

Zuckerman was knighted in the 1956 New Year Honours,[28][29] promoted Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1964 New Year Honours,[30] elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1965,[31] appointed to the Order of Merit on 23 April 1968,[32] elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970,[33] and was awarded a life peerage on 5 April 1971,[34] taking the title Baron Zuckerman of Burnham Thorpe in the County of Norfolk.