- Architect of the US strategy against the Soviet Union at the onset of the Cold War; later a negotiator of arms treaties with the USSR.
- Children: first marriage: Peter, William, Anina, Heidi; second marriage: Erin (stepchild).
- Graduated from Harvard University in 1927 and worked for 12 years as an investment banker at Dillon Read & Co., before taking a job in 1940 in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He eventually served government posts under eight presidents.
- Director of the State Department's policy planning staff in 1950. Helped frame the strategy of building up U.S. forces to keep the Soviets contained in Eastern Europe.
- Founded the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1943. In 1957, he conceived the idea of attaching a "think tank" to the school, which is now called the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute. Three years later he helped Johns Hopkins University raise $4.2 million for the SAIS building near Dupont Circle.
- Was a conservative Democrat who opposed President Jimmy Carter's 1979 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) with the Soviet Union. Later swung to support President Ronald Reagan. He took charge of negotiating reductions in intermediate range missiles with the Soviet Union in 1981 for Reagan, who supported arms control accords.
- Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985.
- Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 398-401. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.
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