John Stuart Foster, Jr.

John Stuart Foster Jr. (born September 18, 1922) is an American physicist, best known as the fourth director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and as Director, Defense Research and Engineering under four Secretaries of Defense and two Presidents.

Dr. Foster was born September 18, 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1948 from McGill University, where his father, Canadian physicist John S. Foster, Sr. was a faculty member. He received his doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1952, while serving as a staff member of the University's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. In 1979, he received an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Missouri.

During World War II, before he received his bachelor's degree, Foster began his career in the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard University. He was an advisor to the 15th Air Force on radar and radar countermeasures in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations in 1943 and 1944. In the summers of 1946 and 1947, he worked on the Canadian nuclear power project in Chalk River, Ontario.

In 1952, Foster was recruited to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory by founder Edward Teller, and became a division leader in experimental physics. He was promoted to associate director in 1958, and director of the Livermore Laboratory and associate director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1961, in which positions he served until 1965.

Foster was appointed Director, Defense Research and Engineering, a position then considered the number three job in the Department of Defense, by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in October, 1965. He continued in this position until June, 1973, serving under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, and under Secretaries of Defense McNamara, Clifford, Laird, and Richardson.

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