C. Bruce Tarter was the eighth director to lead Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since it was founded in 1952. A theoretical physicist by training and experience, he has spent most of his career at the Laboratory.
Tarter was born September 26, 1939 in Louisville, Kentucky. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. His career at the Livermore Laboratory began in 1967 as a staff member in the Theoretical Physics Division. His research concentrated on supercomputer calculations of the properties of matter at high temperatures and densities, with applications to nuclear weapons, fusion, energy, and astrophysics. He became head of Theoretical Physics in 1978.
During the 1980s, Tarter became a Laboratory leader in establishing strong institutional ties with the University of California. He served on a number of institutional committees and task forces, and he helped formulate the Laboratory’s strategic direction as a member of the Long-Range Planning Committee. In 1989, he joined the ranks of senior management as associate director for Physics, a position that he expanded to include weapons physics, space technology leading to the Clementine mission to the Moon, and a broadly based environmental program in global climate and other environmental research.
Prior to his selection as director, Tarter served as deputy director and acting director. In these roles, he led the Laboratory through the transition to a post-Cold War nuclear weapons world, helping to set the foundation for current programs in stewardship of the U.S. nuclear stockpile and nonproliferation, energy and environmental science, and bioscience and biotechnology.
In addition to his Laboratory activities, Tarter has served in a number of outside professional capacities. These include a six-year-period with the Army Science Board, service as an adjunct professor at the University of California at Davis, and membership on the California Council on Science and Technology, the University of California President’s Council on Human Resources and Benefits, the Laboratory Operations Board (Secretary of Energy Advisory Board), Pacific Council on International Policy, Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee, and the Council on Foreign Relations. The author of over 50 articles and reports, Tarter is a fellow of the American Physical Society and received the Roosevelts Gold Medal Award for Science in November 1998.
