Background
Kahn was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Yetta (née Koslowsky) and Abraham Kahn, a tailor. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He was raised in the Bronx, then in Los Angeles following his parents' divorce. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), majoring in physics. During WWII he was stationed by the Army as a telephone linesman in Burma. After World War II, he finished his B.S. at UCLA and embarked on a Ph.D. at Caltech. He dropped out for financial reasons, but did receive an M.Sc. Following briefly working in real estate, he was recruited to RAND by his friend Samuel Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb. He became involved with the development of the hydrogen bomb, commuting to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Northern California and working closely with Edward Teller, John von Neumann, Hans Bethe, and mathematician Albert Wohlstetter.
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
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