Peter Zimmerman

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Peter D. Zimmerman is an American nuclear physicist, arms control expert, and former Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Science and Security at King's College London. He retired from the college in August 2008 and was named Professor Emeritus on 1 September of the same year.^[1]

1 Biography
2 Awards and honors
3 Controversies
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Peter D. Zimmerman was born in Portsmouth, Virginia on 15 June 1941. He graduated from Stanford University in 1963 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He earned a Filosofie Licentiat degree at Lund University in 1967 and a Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1969. All degrees are in experimental nuclear and elementary particle physics.^[2]

Zimmerman was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1988.^[3]

Zimmerman was Chief Scientist of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency until the agency was folded into U.S. Department of State. He then the Science Adviser for Arms Control in the U.S. Department of State. After the election of George W. Bush as president Zimmerman left the State Department and then served as the Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from August 2001 until January 2003 and as Democratic Chief Scientist until March 2004.^[2]

In 2004, Zimmerman became Professor of Science and Security in the Department of War Studies at King's College London.^[1]^[3]

[edit] Awards and honors

2004 Joseph A. Burton Forum Award Recipient^[3]

[edit] Controversies

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He was one of only a half-dozen people (including Senator Bob Graham) to critically read the controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction in a secure room in the Capitol October 2, 2002. After noticing the striking dissenting opinions from the Energy Department and the State Department stated in the annex, he remembers thinking "If anybody takes the time to actually read this, they can't believe there actually are major WMD programs." He encouraged his colleagues with security clearance to take the time to read the NIE, to no avail.