Frederic de Hoffmann (July 8, 1924 – October 4, 1989) was an Austrian-born American nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. He was born in Vienna, Austria and died in San Diego, California.[1] He came to the United States of America in 1941 and graduated from Harvard University in 1945. He also received a master's in 1947 and a doctorate in 1948.[1] Before graduating, de Hoffmann was sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1944 where he assisted Edward Teller in the development of the Hydrogen bomb.[1] Frederic de Hoffmann was an advocate of peaceful atomic energy.[1]
After leaving Los Alamos, de Hoffmann collaborated with Hans Bethe and Silvan Schweber on a textbook called Mesons and Fields and became chairman of the Committee of Senior Reviewers of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.[2] He received his Ph.D from Julian Schwinger in 1948.[3]
Frederic De Hoffmann moved to the General Dynamics Corporation in 1955.[1] That year he was recruited by John Jay Hopkins to found General Atomics and serve as its first president.[1][4] This organization's purpose was to manufacture nuclear reactors for energy production, and sell them on the open market.[5] In the late '50s he organized Project Orion, a plan for a spaceship to be propelled by nuclear bombs.[6]
He helped found the University of California's campus in San Diego, the University of California, San Diego.[4]
De Hoffmann joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in 1970 and served as its president for 18 years.[1] He was also the chairman and chief executive officer of the Salk Institute Biotechnology-Industry Associates Inc.[5] When de Hoffmann retired in 1988 he was named the institute's president emeritus.[5] He died in 1989 of AIDS,[1] which he contracted in 1984 from an infected blood transfusion he received during surgery.[7]
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