Christopher Haynam

Christopher A. Haynam is a retired physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who played a central role in the development of the National Ignition Facility’s laser system, an extremely large and high-energy laser facility. Haynam earned his undergraduate degree at Miami University of Ohio and his doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of Chicago, where his dissertation examined the structure and dynamics of van der Waals complexes involving tetrazine and its methyl derivatives — spectroscopic studies of weakly bound molecular clusters. He subsequently joined Lawrence Livermore, where he became a senior scientist involved in the development and operation of the NIF laser system, contributing to the laser physics and optical systems engineering that enabled the facility’s fusion ignition experiments.