We are diminished. Jonathan Tucker

Today we learned that Jonathan Tucker has passed away. Jonathan was a highly respected expert on chemical and biological weapons and policy issues and Ploughshares Fund is proud to have supported his efforts towards a safer and more peaceful world.

Most recently Jonathan was heading up a program at the Federation of American Scientists on Biosecurity Education. This was only the most recent of his long and valuable contributions inside and outside of government to ensure that the most urgent threats were being addressed in effective ways. Over his career, Jonathan worked at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. Department of State, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and as a specialist in chemical and biological arms control at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). While at ACDA, he served on the U.S. delegation to the Chemical Weapons Convention PrepCom in The Hague and on a United Nations biological weapons inspection team in Baghdad, Iraq. He also wrote Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox (2001) and War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al-Qaeda (2006) and was the editor of Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (2000) and Synthesizing Security: Reaping the Benefits of Emerging Biological and Chemical Technologies While Preventing Malicious Misuse (forthcoming 2012, MIT Press).

Those that worked with him will remember Jonathan as a warm and gentle person who also had a determined nature to make sure the best and most accurate information was applied to policy. We at Ploughshares Fund express our condolences to Jonathan’s family and our support at this difficult time.