Martin Sherwin, Ph.D. ’71

When the Pulitzer Prize committee announced winners recently, Martin Sherwin Ph.D. ’71 was thrilled to discover he’d been recognized in the biography category for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Sherwin co-authored the book, a biography of Oppenheimer, known as Father of the Atomic Bomb, with Kai Bird. The biography contributes enormously to the field of history and the study of the nuclear age, according to the Pulitzer Prize committee. The book previously was awarded the Book Critics Circle Award.

After completing his degree, Sherwin went on to found Tufts University’s Nuclear Age History and Humanities Center in 1985, as well as the Global Project (1988-92) - a 'space bridge' program that employed TV satellite technology to link university students in Moscow and the United States for interactive discussions about the great issues of the day, including the nuclear arms race and the environment. From 1993-95, Sherwin was director of Dartmouth College’s John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.

In addition to American Prometheus, Sherwin has written A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (A.A. Knopf), a finalist for the 1976 Pulitzer Prize. The book won the Stuart Bernath Prize awarded by the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations as well as the American History Book Prize awarded by the National Historical Society.

Sherwin's articles and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and journals including The American Historical Review, The Journal of American History, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Nation, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. He is the founder and general editor of the “Stanford University Press Nuclear Age Series." In 1984 he was elected into the Society of American Historians in recognition of “distinguished historical writing.”

Sherwin has been an advisor for many documentary films on the history of the nuclear age, including, The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb (1981), A History of Nuclear Strategy (1983), Are We Winning, Mommy?: The Cold War and American Culture (1985), War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (1989) (13-part PBS series) and Hiroshima: Why the Bomb was Dropped (ABC News, 1995). He was the co-executive producer and NEH Project Director of the PBS documentary film, Stalin’s Bomb Maker: Citizen Kurchatov (1998) a biography of Igor Kurchatov, the first scientific director of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons programs.

Sherwin is currently an advisor to filmmaker Jon Else for Wonders Are Many, a documentary about the making of Dr. Atomic, an opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb.

Sherwin is currently a Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University.