A. Wohlstetter; Expert on Nuclear Arms

Albert Wohlstetter, an expert on nuclear deterrence during the Cold War who earned the nation’s Medal of Freedom, has died. He was 83.

Wohlstetter, a former expert for Rand Corp., died Thursday night in Los Angeles, a Rand spokesman said Friday.

The intellectual advisor shared the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, with his wife, historian Roberta Wohlstetter, in 1985.

In the White House ceremony bestowing the honor, President Ronald Reagan praised Albert Wohlstetter as “influential in helping to design and deploy our strategic forces.”

The couple had served as advisors to President John F. Kennedy during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and Albert later advised Reagan to keep certain strategic weapons and their carriers based in the United States rather than abroad.

Wohlstetter was considered a major intellectual force behind efforts to avoid the spread of nuclear weapons and the drive to reduce reliance on them by developing non-nuclear alternatives.

In his later years, Wohlstetter was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and served as president of the European-American Institute for Security Research.

A native of New York, he earned degrees from Columbia University and later taught at UCLA and UC Berkeley and then for many years at the University of Chicago. He was also a director of research for Pan Heuristics Services, based in Los Angeles.