Gordon Evans Dean (December 28, 1905 – August 15, 1958) was a Seattle-born American lawyer and prosecutor who served as chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) from 1950 to 1953.

Early years

Dean received his J.D. from the University of Southern California in 1930 and an LL.M. from Duke University Law School in 1932. In 1934, Dean joined the U.S. Department of Justice during the New Deal administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Dean served under Attorneys General Homer S. Cummings and Frank Murphy as a Criminal Division attorney and press spokesperson. He had taught at Duke Law before being hired as assistant to Brien McMahon in the Criminal Division. Dean had been recommended to Truman by McMahon, who by this time had become Senator (elected in 1944), author of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, and chair of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee of Congress.

During August 1949–January 1950 there was a heated debate within the U.S. government and scientific community over whether to proceed with an accelerated development of the hydrogen bomb, Accordingly, Dean was in October 1949 one of two AEC commissioners who supported proceeding with such development, against three who opposed it. The AEC's General Advisory Committee (GAC), chaired by J. Robert Oppenheimer, also opposed the H-bomb development. Dean supported the scope of the GAC report, which relied in part on moral grounds, but was not persuaded by the report itself, remarking to a scientist that the GAC members were behaving in the manner of a "bunch of college professors." He was the second chairman of the commission, following David Lilienthal, and the appointment was again with McMahon's backing. Dean was inherently skeptical about military requests, believing they often asked for arbitrary numbers without underlying rationales.

From 1954, Dean chaired a Council on Foreign Relations study group on nuclear weapons and U.S. foreign policy. Members of the group included Paul Nitze, Robert Bowie, David Rockefeller, and Lieutenant General James M. Gavin. Henry Kissinger joined as study group director in 1955. Dean would also join the International Security Objectives and Strategy panel of the Rockefeller Brothers' Special Studies Project in 1956.

Death

Dean died in a commercial aviation accident on August 15, 1958, when the Northeast Airlines Convair CV-240 he was traveling in crashed on its approach to Nantucket Airport.

Works

  • Foreword to Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, by Henry A. Kissinger. New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper & Brothers (1957), pp. vii-x.

References

  • Annotated bibliography for Gordon Dean from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
  • The rise and fall of the Fruehauf Trailer Company, Gordon Dean Board member

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