Defense Expert : Physicist Expected to Be Named as Scripps Director

San Diego physicist Edward A. Frieman is expected to be named the new director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography by the University of California Regents at their meeting in Los Angeles today.

Frieman, executive vice president of the Science Applications International Corp. in La Jolla, a predominantly military-oriented high-technology firm, will become the eighth director of Scripps, the renowned marine sciences center that is part of UC San Diego.

A University of California official, who asked not to be named, confirmed on Thursday the expected appointment of Frieman after a San Diego newspaper broke a news embargo on the announcement Thursday afternoon.

Frieman, 60, replaces William A. Nierenberg, who retired earlier this year after serving as director since 1965. Frieman will officially assume the post on July 1.

Scripps, with an annual budget of $60 million, is the nation’s oldest and largest center for teaching and research in the marine sciences. The 83-year-old institution was founded in 1903 and joined the UC system in 1912. When UCSD was established in 1964, Scripps became part of the new campus.

About a fourth of the annual Scripps research budget is funded by the U.S. Navy through its Office of Naval Research. Only about 10% of the Navy work is classified.

Frieman specializes in plasma physics, which is the study of highly ionized gases such as those manipulated in the process for making thermonuclear weapons. After teaching at Princeton University from 1952 to 1979, he served as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy from 1979 to 1981. He then joined Science Applications International, an important but relatively unpublicized member of the defense technology community that had revenues of $532 million last year. Of that amount, two-thirds was defense-related, including $4 million in contracts on preliminary aspects of the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars.

Frieman has served on numerous government panels related to defense, including the Defense Science Board; an advisory group on advanced technology for the U.S. Navy; the Jason Group, an elite panel of American scientists who advise the military on technological issues related to national defense, where he served as chairman, and several National Security Council and Department of Defense boards. Frieman is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.