NEW YORK — Jeremy J. Stone, a mathematician whose ideas about minimizing the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe influenced arms-control negotiators in the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, died Jan. 1 of heart failure at his home in Carlsbad, Calif. He was 81.
Mr. Stone’s focus on arms reduction began in 1963 with what he called “an electric thought’’: If the Soviets could be persuaded not to build a missile defense system, then perhaps the United States could be persuaded not to build one of its own.
“Both sides would then avoid the waste of expensive, ineffective systems that would, still worse, accelerate each side’s interest in buying offsetting offensive missile systems,’’ Mr. Stone wrote in “Every Man Should Try’’ (1999), one of his two autobiographies.
It was a counterintuitive argument: that missile defenses could encourage both sides to build more offensive weapons. But it was central to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limited the number, type and placement of missiles that the United States and the Soviet Union could deploy to shoot down attacking missiles.
Mr. Stone was not the only policy expert, in or out of the government, who thought that way. But Matthew Evangelista, the author of “Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War’’ (2002), and other arms-control historians said Mr. Stone made an important contribution: the regular trips he took to the Soviet Union.
During the trips, Mr. Stone cajoled scientists and foreign-policy experts about the wisdom of limiting missile defense systems. His wife, Betty Jean Yannet, also a mathematician (better known as B.J. Stone), learned Russian to help him on his missions.
“He was one of the leading figures in arms control,’’ Evangelista said. “It took a while for the Soviet side to appreciate the arguments, and he was involved in contacts with Soviet scientists over many years to persuade them. He changed a lot of minds.’’
By 1966, Evangelista said, some Soviet scientists who were involved in military research and were close to Soviet leaders were calling a US plan to limit missile defenses “Jeremy Stone’s proposal.’’
Morton Halperin, who served three White House administrations in national security and diplomatic positions, said in an interview that Mr. Stone “understood what many advocates don’t: that if you want to influence governments, you have to give them an idea for what they can actually do rather than lecture them about peace or arms control.’’
During the debate over the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, the missile defense system pushed by President Reagan, Mr. Stone told a meeting of Soviet scientists in 1985 in Moscow that disarmament was the best response to the White House plan.
“You people are saying that if we go ahead with Star Wars, there can be no disarmament,’’ Mr. Stone is quoted as saying in “The Master of the Game’’ (1988), a biography of nuclear-arms negotiator Paul H. Nitze written by Strobe Talbott. “I agree, but you should turn it around.’’
“You should see that if both sides go ahead with disarmament, there can be no Star Wars,’’ he said.
A native of New York City, Jeremy Judah Stone was the son of I.F. Stone, the radical journalist who published the muckraking newsletter I.F. Stone’s Weekly. His mother, Esther, ran the newsletter’s administrative operations.
