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Wallace retires from LANL

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By scooby

 https://ladailypost.com/former-los-alamos-national-laboratory-director-terry-wallace-retires/


Terry C. Wallace, Jr., Los Alamos National Laboratory’s former director, retired from the Laboratory on June 30.


I have to say I have not heard many people say anything good about Terry Wallace. I sis heard him make some snide comments about Pete Nanos so at least he has something going for him.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wallace was pretty arrogant and dismissing of people below him. I think it was insecurity about his actual level of knowledge of the lab's technical programs. He's a geophysicist, not a weapons guy.
6/30/2021 5:28 PM
Anonymous said…
Terry knew his strengths and limitations, and knew to solicit input where he lacked knowledge or experience. If he was arrogant and dismissive, those traits were surpassed in magnitude by the average staff member at LANL, and he certainly was not a fan of the entitlement mentality that pervades that institution.
6/30/2021 8:34 PM
Anonymous said…
"Terry knew his strengths and limitations, and knew to solicit input where he lacked knowledge or experience. If he was arrogant and dismissive, those traits were surpassed in magnitude by the average staff member at LANL, and he certainly was not a fan of the entitlement mentality that pervades that institution.

6/30/2021 8:34 PM"

Hmm, the only problem with this argument is that the weapons people did not like him but the other group of scientists who spend some time outside of weapons programs absolutely hated the guy. Most of these people have superior records to Terry and did not think much of him. I never heard anyone say he was arrogant but that he was just very insecure. We will not mention that everyone in geophysics knows about the "issues" he had at U of Arizona not long before he left for LANL (all of this has been talked about endless times on the various LANL/LLNL blogs) . To be honest the only other guy I meet that was more insecure around real scientists was Steve Younger.

8:34 pm I find your opinion to be a bid odd . If you are retired I hope you enjoy it, if you will retire in the future I hope you enjoy it, if you retired today I also hope you enjoy it ;)




6/30/2021 10:03 PM
Anonymous said…


Hey 6/30/2021 10:03 PM:

"Steve Younger insecure around real scientists" ?

What other planet have you been living on for the past 30 years?

7/01/2021 7:36 PM
Anonymous said…
In my interactions with Younger as LANL Weapons chief, he was never "insecure." He was also never less than civil and respectful. I found his intellect sharp and willing to reconsider when presented with new (to him) information.
7/02/2021 7:30 PM
Anonymous said…
In my interactions with Younger as LANL Weapons chief, he was never "insecure." He was also never less than civil and respectful. I found his intellect sharp and willing to reconsider when presented with new (to him) information.

7/02/2021 7:30 PM

After the WHL incident Younger was put in T-Div, he was beyond intimidated. He gave a few talks and tried to pitch some of is beyond silly ideas and got torn to shreds. He just radiated pure insecurity and is his research he was trying to do on complex systems was amateur level stuff. He would try and sound like he knew what he was talking about by mentioning philosophers and even got that wrong. Everyone thought that guy was a total joke and a phony. It got so bad that some people stated to feel sorry for him.
7/03/2021 10:34 AM
Anonymous said…

7/03/2021 10:34 AM

Good grief, use a spell checker.

7/03/2021 8:50 PM
Anonymous said…

Good grief, use a spell checker.


7/03/2021 8:50 PM

Great counter.
7/03/2021 9:01 PM
Anonymous said…
Younger was a complete failure as Sandia director. He was arrogant and capricious, acting mostly as a bully.

Under him and Honeywell, Sandia has gotten much worse and become extremely adversarial toward employees. They have helped open a gaping chasm between the rank & file staff and the management. Many of the good people at the Directors level are leaving, a real mass exodus. Sandia has basically turned into a shabby defense contractor, losing any distinction as a National Lab.

Things have gotten much much worse. Sandia was always third best and under Honeywell they are fading from that position fast.
11/10/2019 7:03 AM
7/03/2021 9:25 PM
Anonymous said…
What makes this comment so hilarious is that when he was in T-Div the only two people who interact with him and he would dote on where considered the dumbest of the dumb. These two guys could barley find the bathroom and fortunately left the lab for the land of unemployment. One of the guys was a wannabe hippie who wore a tunic, so the old timers know exactly who I am talking about ;). It was sort of hard to take Younger seriously when talked so highly of these guys. I always suspected that Younger knew exactly who these guys where but was simply using them for his own ends. He seemed to have a knack for finding the most low life sniveling sycophants. Perhaps he was not dumb but certainly not very principled. The other odd thing was his "fake" voice, which would change from high flowery praise and compliments to fake pseudo-intellectual banter. I found this ability beyond transparent and creepy. At some point he was talking to a group about some model of complex systems in which he was bragging about having over 30 parameters, at which point we had to explain him that having more the even 2 uncontrolled parameters would lead to rubbish results for rather obvious reasons. It was a weird conversation since I have never heard a scientist ever talk about models this say. The closest I have seen is that of flat earth videos with people giving some sort of 20 parameter model for a flat earth. The other strange thing is that he would try throw in random thoughts about philosophy which added nothing and in every case was actually wrong in the context of the conversion. I think he did this to try and show how smart he was. There are many more stories about this guy including how he gave some talks about simulating biological systems. His ideas fell into four classes (1) trivial, (2) wrong, (3) trivial and wrong. (4) not even wrong. I liked the time he said in 2001 that we should simulate E-coli from first principles. That was it, no reason why we should, no estimate that such a thing is impossible with current competing and foreseeable computing, which takes about 5 seconds to estimated if you know the 10^23 is much much greater than 10^7. Truly bizarre.
7/03/2021 9:32 PM
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