Thinker of the Unthinkable

Herman Kahn: 1922-1983

From a mind that was at once brooding and sparkling, eclectic and intense, ideas poured forth that were able to shock a nation and yet influence its policies. Treating nuclear war as unthinkable, he said, made it all the more probable, and the U.S. must prepare to survive one. He predicted the boom of Japan’s economy well before the Datsun invasion; more recently he warned of problems that lie ahead for that island nation. For the U.S., he saw a new golden age during the next two decades marked by disappearing poverty, an upsurge of productivity and an abundance of resources. Even his book titles— Thinking About the Unthinkable (1962), The Japanese Challenge (1979), The Coming Boom (1982)—were destined to pass into the lexicon of policy debates.

Herman Kahn, who died last week at his home in Chappaqua, N.Y., of a heart attack at 61, was a mathematician, physicist, economist, weapons analyst and historian. But above all he was a provocateur in the sedate world of ideas, a futurist who attempted, in his own words, “to cope with history before it happens.” He was a pioneer in using scientific and mathematical tools to project the future. With his 300-lb. bulk and a florid face framed by a tailored white beard, Kahn had a commanding presence that seemed to complement a mental and verbal vigor bordering on arrogance. He briefed, and at times berated, every President starting with Harry Truman, and at his first hour-long meeting with Ronald Reagan in 1981, he permitted the new President to get in only a few words. “The main thing we do is change attitudes,” Kahn told TIME Correspondent Joelle Attinger shortly before his death. “We’re trying to educate policymakers.”

Kahn was born in Bayonne, N.J., graduated from U.C.L.A. in 1945 and three years later joined the Rand Corp., the California think tank that helps the Pentagon develop defense strategies. He rejected the prevailing nuclear doctrine, Mutual Assured Destruction, which postulates that the devastation accompanying a nuclear exchange will deter the use of such weapons. Instead, he urged preparation for fighting limited nuclear wars.

In 1961 Kahn left Rand to help form his own think tank, the Hudson Institute, on bucolic acreage north of New York City. He kept his umbilical cord of contracts with the Pentagon; approximately half of the institute’s $3.6 million annual budget comes from Government contracts. But he also branched out to ponder other societal problems. Among the studies being pursued: prospects for electronic transmission of mail, ways to win a war in El Salvador, alternatives to the federal income tax, the strength of the Soviet navy. On a typical day, Kahn moved from seminars to informal discussions spouting such iconoclastic judgments as “The nuclear freeze is immoral” and “The welfare economy is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Such orotund pronouncements often infuriated critics, who charged that Kahn was more interested in glib provocation than reflective analysis.

To a large extent, the work he and other analysts did at Rand led to the adoption of the more refined nuclear war-fighting strategies currently in place. But the grim prospect of the unthinkable never diluted his evangelical optimism; during the past year he concentrated on selling his vision of a prosperous world future to schools and textbook publishers. “We’ve had 20 years of pessimism in this country,” he said at a heated exchange at the Hudson Institute. “Being a realist today makes one an optimist.”

—By Walter Isaacson

EXPECTING. Jane Pauley, 32, co-host of NBC’s Today Show whose 1981 pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, and Garry Trudeau, 34, Pulitzer-prizewinning political cartoonist, currently on sabbatical from his Doonesbury comic strip: twins, their first children; in December.

DIVORCED. Patricia Neal, 57, Oscar-winning actress (Hud, 1963), and Roald Dahl, 66, British author of macabre short stories (Switch Bitch) and wry children’s tales (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory); after 30 years of marriage, five children; in London. Dahl’s affair with one of his wife’s friends devastated a marriage that had survived much tragedy: a traffic accident that caused brain damage to their son, the death of a seven-year-old daughter from measles, and three nearly fatal strokes that partly paralyzed Neal during her fifth pregnancy in 1965.

DIED. Vicki Morgan, 30, sometime model and the late Alfred Bloomingdale’s mistress, whose unsuccessful but much publicized $5 million palimony suit against the former Diners Club chairman featured lurid descriptions of his sexual fetishes; of head injuries suffered when she was bludgeoned with a baseball bat by her boyfriend, Marvin Pancoast; in North Hollywood, Calif. Pancoast, 33, an unemployed office clerk who had lived with Morgan for three weeks, told police that they had been arguing over “finances” before he attacked her while she slept.

DIED. Harry James, 67, sweet and fiery trumpeter and enduring Big Band leader; of lymphatic cancer; in Las Vegas. The son of a circus bandmaster and a trapeze artist, James joined Benny Goodman’s sizzling swing-era trumpet section in 1937. Two years later, after forming his own band, James discovered young Frank Sinatra, who left (to join Tommy Dorsey) before the band’s romantic 1941 hit recording of You Made Me Love You established James as one of the premier swingmen during World War II. His fame hit its peak in 1943, when he married America’s No. 1 pinup, Betty Grable (from whom he was divorced 22 years later). Despite the many subsequent changes in popular taste, James held a band together for 40 years, playing his final gig ten days before he died.

DIED. William W. Caudill, 69, architect and a founder of the Houston-based Caudill, Rowlett and Scott Group, an international architecture and construction company; of a heart attack; in Houston. The C.R.S. Group’s innovative designs include the U.S. embassy complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Harvard’s Roy Larsen Hall.

DIED. Anne Hewlett Fuller, 87, widow of Futurist Inventor R. Buckminster Fuller, who suffered a fatal heart attack while visiting his comatose wife’s bedside; after an intestinal operation; in Los Angeles. Although she did not learn of his death, Mrs. Fuller died 36 hours after her husband. They were buried together last week in Cambridge, Mass.