Oct 11, 2005 - Claremont, Calif. - Bob Kelley (right) during weapons inspection in Iraq in 2002 Previously, Bob was deputy leader of the Iraq Action Team from 1992 to 1993 and from 2001 to 2004. He was part of the team that verified the destruction of South African nuclear weapons in 1993 and made the revelations in Libya in 2004. He directs the majority of the agency's evaluations of states in the Operations B region, which includes Africa, the Middle East, South Asia (including Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh) and the Americas. It also includes non-European Union states in Europe and Russia. After his graduation as a physics major in 1967, he earned his master's degree in nuclear physics at the University of Missouri and worked at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories. While at Mudd, Bob was a member of the Bates Aeronautics Program and remains in close contact with Iris Critchell, instructor in aeronautics emerita, and her husband Howard ("Critch"). International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna (photo, right) "My walls are covered with maps and aerial photos that are always the first step in visualizing the geographic problems that underlie nuclear proliferation. The HMC focus on humanities and social sciences is also vital when you are trying to understand the motivations and connections in nuclear proliferation and terrorism." Additional information:
Harvey Mudd College alumnus Robert (Bob) Kelley '67 and his wife Kathleen are part of the 2,200-member Secretariat of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that was recognized last week as co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, along with the agency's Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei.
Bob is currently senior inspector for Operations "B" in the Department of Safeguards at the IAEA, one of six divisions in the agency. The IAEA promotes nuclear medicine, energy and safety in addition to its role in nuclear weapons nonproliferation. Bob has been part of numerous high-profile and sometimes controversial nuclear weapons inspection programs, including the one in Iraq that was halted just prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003. Kathleen, who is British, serves as a translator for the agency and is fluent in many languages. They met while working at the IAEA, were married two and one-half years ago and live in Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered.
"The reason I am so proud of Critch and Iris," he said, "is the key role they played in my development. Bates was designed to instill confidence in young men (I have to say 'men' because that was in the charter) by giving them a serious activity to master. Above all it gave me a spatial orientation above the earth that has allowed me to see the surface of the planet and to imagine the relationships below me.
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