Kahn, Herman (kän), 1922–83, American military strategist. b. Bayonne, N.J. After graduate work in physics at the California Institute of Technology, he joined the Rand Corporation Rand Corporation, research institution in Santa Monica, Calif.; founded 1948 and supported by federal, state, and local governments, as well as by foundations and corporations. Its principal fields of research are national security and public welfare.
..... Click the link for more information. . Unlike scholars such as Bernard Brodie Brodie, Bernard, 1910–78, American military strategist, b. Chicago. Brodie edited The Absolute Weapon (1946), the first book on nuclear strategy, and was a strategic theorist at the Rand Corporation (1951–66).
..... Click the link for more information. , he believed that nuclear war could be won. At Rand, he studied the application of such analytic techniques as game theory and systems analysis to military theory. In 1961 he founded the Hudson Institute, where he conducted research into questions of national security and the future. His writings include On Thermonuclear War (1961), Thinking about the Unthinkable (1962), On Escalation (1965), The Emerging Japanese Superstate (1970), The Future of the Corporation (1974), The Japanese Challenge (1979), and Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s (1984).

Bibliography

See biography by B. Bruce-Briggs (2000); study by S. Ghamari-Tabrizi (2005).

Kahn, Herman

(born Feb. 15, 1922, Bayonne, N.J., U.S.—died July 7, 1983, Chappaqua, N.Y.) U.S. physicist and strategist. He studied at the California Institute of Technology and joined the RAND Corp., where he studied the application to military strategy of new analytic techniques such as game theory, operations research, and systems analysis. He won public notice with On Thermonuclear War (1960), in which he contended that thermonuclear war differs only in degree from conventional war and ought to be analyzed and planned in the same way. In 1961 he established the Hudson Institute for research into matters of national security and public policy.