Dr. Thomas B. Cochran

Dr. Thomas B. Cochran is a nuclear physicist, environmentalist, and author with a focus on nuclear weapons, fissile material control, fast reactors and nuclear fuel cycles. He is a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Prior to retiring in 2011, he was a senior scientist and held the Wade Greene Chair for Nuclear Policy at NRDC, and was director of its Nuclear Program until 2007. In the 1980s he initiated NRDC’s Nuclear Weapons Databook project as well as a series of joint nuclear weapons projects with the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He has been member of several advisory boards, including DOE’s Energy Research Advisory Board, Environmental Management Advisory Board, and Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Board, the Three Mile Island (TMI) Public Health Advisory Board, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Advisory Committee on the Cleanup of TMI. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the American Physical Society’s Szilard Award and the Federation of American Scientists’ Public Service Award. His work also warranted NRDC’s winning of the AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. Dr. Cochran received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University and was assistant professor of physics at the Naval Postgraduate School in California while on active duty in the U.S. Navy. He was then supervisor of a modeling and simulation group at the Scientific Support Laboratory, Litton Mellonics Division, and then senior research associate at Resources for the Future before joining NRDC in 1973.