Lewis Strauss
Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss (/ˈstrɔːz/ STRAWZ; January 31, 1896 – January 21, 1974) was an American government official, businessman, philanthropist, and naval officer. He was one of the original members of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1946 and he served as the commission's chair in the 1950s. Strauss was a major figure in the development of nuclear weapons after World War II, nuclear energy policy, and nuclear power in the United States.[1]
Lewis Strauss
Position established
January 21, 1974 (aged 77)
Brandy Station, Virginia, U.S.
Alice Hanauer
2
United States
1926–1945
Raised in Richmond, Virginia, Strauss became an assistant to Herbert Hoover as part of the Commission for Relief in Belgium during World War I and the American Relief Administration after that. Strauss then worked as an investment banker at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. during the 1920s and 1930s, where he amassed considerable wealth. As a member of the executive committee of the American Jewish Committee and several other Jewish organizations in the 1930s, Strauss made several attempts to change U.S. policy in order to accept more refugees from Nazi Germany but was unsuccessful. He also came to know and fund some of the research of refugee nuclear physicist Leo Szilard. During World War II Strauss served as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and rose to the rank of rear admiral due to his work in the Bureau of Ordnance in managing and rewarding plants engaged in production of munitions.
As a founding commissioner with the AEC during the early years of the Cold War, Strauss emphasized the need to protect U.S. atomic secrets and to monitor and stay ahead of atomic developments within the Soviet Union. Accordingly, he was a strong proponent of developing the hydrogen bomb. During his stint as chairman of the AEC, Strauss urged the development of peaceful uses of atomic energy and he predicted that atomic power would make electricity "too cheap to meter". At the same time he downplayed the possible health effects of radioactive fallout such as that experienced by Pacific Islanders following the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test.
Strauss was the driving force behind physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing, held in April and May 1954 before an AEC Personnel Security Board, in which Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked. As a result, Strauss often has been regarded as a villain in American history.[2][3][4][5] President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nomination of Strauss to become U.S. secretary of commerce resulted in a prolonged, public political battle in 1959 where Strauss was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Early life[edit]
Strauss was born in Charleston, West Virginia,[1] the son of Rosa (née Lichtenstein) and Lewis Strauss, a successful shoe wholesaler.[6] Their parents were Jewish emigrants from Germany and Austria who came to the United States in the 1830s and 1840s and settled in Virginia.[7] His family moved to Richmond, Virginia, and he grew up and attended public schools there.[8][9] At the age of ten, he lost much of the vision in his right eye in a rock fight,[10] which later disqualified him from normal
military service.[11]
Having developed an amateur's knowledge from reading textbooks, Strauss planned to study physics.[8] He was on track to be valedictorian of his class at John Marshall High School, which would have entitled him to a scholarship to the University of Virginia, but typhoid fever in his senior year made him unable to take final exams or graduate with his classmates.[12]
By the time he finally graduated from high school, his family's business had experienced a downturn during the Recession of 1913–1914.[13] In order to help out,[13] Strauss decided to work as a traveling shoe salesman for his father's company.[14][8] In his spare time, Strauss studied his Jewish heritage.[15] He was quite successful in his sales efforts;[16] over the next three years, he saved $20,000 (equivalent to $476,000 in 2023): enough money to cover college tuition now that the scholarship offer was no longer in effect.[13][17]