Avner Cohen

Trained as a philosopher and historian of ideas, Dr. Cohen turned early on in his career into nuclear history. He is widely known for his path-breaking historical studies of the Israeli nuclear program. He is a two-time winner of the MacArthur Foundation research and writing awards, in 1990 and 2004. He was also a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in 1997-98 and 2007-08, and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC in 2008-09. Currently he is a Global Fellow with the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Dr. Cohen is the co-editor of Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Humanity (1986) and The Institution of Philosophy (1989), and the author of The Nuclear Age as Moral History (in Hebrew, 1989). His most acclaimed book, Israel and the Bomb, was published by Columbia University Press in 1998. His latest book, The Worst Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb, was published in 2010 by Columbia University Press. In addition, Dr. Cohen has authored many monographs, on-line archival historical collections, scholarly articles, books chapters, and short articles, and has been a prolific author of op-eds, feature articles and book reviews in the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Ha’aretz, and many other American and Israeli newspapers since the 1970s.