The Grainger College of Engineering

Bruce T. Goodwin

Bruce T. Goodwin
Bruce T. Goodwin
To Bruce T. Goodwin, for his contributions to national security through his leadership and research in the U.S. nuclear weapons program through an era of great change.

Associate Director, Defense and Nuclear Technologies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California

  • BS 1972, Physics, City College of New York
  • MS 1978, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • PhD 1982, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 As Associate Director for Defense and Nuclear Technologies at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Bruce T. Goodwin is responsible for executing the nuclear weapons activities comprising LLNL’s stockpile program. Previous to his current position, he was the B Division leader and B Program manager. In this dual role, he was responsible for primary nuclear explosives design and research at LLNL. During his tenure, primary design at LLNL moved from reliance on nuclear testing to the science-based model of stockpile stewardship and he played a key role in developing and implementing this new methodology. He has also been a primary design group leader, the boost physics project manager, and the B Division materials R&D project manager. This latter project was directed at the fire safety of primary weapons.

Goodwin has been a physicist in B Division, at LLNL, for more than 16 years. Before coming to B Division, he was a physicist in the Nuclear and Hydrodynamic Applications Group (X-4) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for four years. While a research assistant at Illinois, he spent three winters in research at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Atomic Physics (NORDITA) in Copenhagen, Denmark. In his role as a nuclear weapons designer, Goodwin has been the lead or collaborating design physicist on five nuclear weapons tests, three fired by LLNL and two fired by LANL. For his work in nuclear weapons design, Goodwin has three times received the Award of Excellence for Significant Contribution to the Nuclear Weapons Program from the Office of Military Application, Department of Energy (DOE). For his work on the properties of plutonium, he has received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Physics and Space Technology Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He has also received the Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine Year 2000 Aerospace Laurels Honor in the Government/Military Category for significant contributions to the global field of aerospace.

Most recently, Goodwin was awarded the Department of Energy E. O. Lawrence Award— the DOE’s highest award for scientific contributions—for his theoretical work on equations of state of plutonium under extreme pressures. Since 1998, Goodwin has served on the Department of Aerospace Engineering Alumni Advisory Board at Illinois, and received the AE department’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2000.

Current as of 2006.