Researching Lewis Strauss

Raised in Richmond, Virginia, Strauss became an assistant to Herbert Hoover as part of relief efforts during and after World War I. Strauss then worked as an investment banker at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. during the 1920s and 1930s, where he amassed considerable wealth. As a member of the executive committee of the American Jewish Committee and several other Jewish organizations in the 1930s, Strauss made several attempts to change U.S. policy in order to accept more refugees from Nazi Germany but was unsuccessful. During World War II Strauss served as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and rose to the rank of rear admiral due to his work in the Bureau of Ordnance in managing and rewarding plants engaged in production of munitions.

As a founding commissioner with the AEC during the early years of the Cold War, Strauss emphasized the need to protect U.S. atomic secrets and to monitor and stay ahead of atomic developments within the Soviet Union. As such Strauss was a strong proponent of developing the hydrogen bomb. During his stint as chairman of the AEC, Strauss urged the development of peaceful uses of atomic energy, including making an ill-advised prediction that atomic power would make electricity "too cheap to meter". At the same time he minimized the possible health effects of radioactive fallout such as those experienced by Pacific Islanders following the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test. Strauss was the driving force in the controversial hearings, held in April 1954 before an AEC Personnel Security Board, in which physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked. As a result, Strauss has often been regarded as a villain in American history. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nomination of Strauss to become U.S. Secretary of Commerce resulted in a prolonged, nationally visible political battle during 1959 and Strauss was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate.