James Eugene Goodby is an author and former US diplomat.

Goodby was born in Providence, Rhode Island

Providence, Rhode Island

Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...

. He graduated from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 1951 and served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Air Force during the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

.

He later served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, a position he filled in various roles until his retirement in 1989. Some highlights during this period include:

• Negotiations with NATO alliance partners as part of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe to create the Helsinki Accords
  Helsinki Accords
  thumb|300px|[[Erich Honecker]] and [[Helmut Schmidt]] in Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki 1975....
  
  .
• US Ambassador
  Ambassador
  An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
  
   to Finland
  Finland
  Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
  
   in 1980 and 1981.
• Vice chairman of the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START)

In 1993 he returned from retirement to become the Chief U.S. Negotiator for the Safe and Secure Dismantlement of Nuclear Weapons. During this time he negotiated agreements with several former Soviet republics to dismantle nuclear weapons in those countries and to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation. He later won the 1st Annual Heinz Award

Heinz Award

The Heinz Award is an award currently given annually to ten honorees by the Heinz Family Foundation. The Heinz Awards recognize outstanding individuals for their contributions in the five areas of: Arts and Humanities, the Environment, the Human Condition, Public Policy, and Technology, the Economy...

 in Public Policy for this work in 1995.

He currently is a Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the rookings Institution], a member of the Bipartisan Security Group
, and a research fellow at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

's Hoover Institutuion.

Publications (partial list)

• Europe Undivided: The New Logic of Peace in U.S.-Russian Relations, United States Institute of Peace Press, 1998
• The Nuclear Turning Point: A Blueprint for Deep Cuts and De-Alerting of Nuclear Weapons (contributor), Brookings Institution Press, 1999.
• The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons, with Sidney D. Drell, Hoover Institution Press, 2003.
• Strategy for Stable Peace: Toward a Euroatlantic Security Community (co-author with Piet Buwalda and Dmitrii Trenin), Brookings, 2003.
• At the Borderline of Armageddon: How American Presidents Managed the Atom Bomb, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006