--- title: "Obituary - Michael Elleman" description: "CBRNe World provides those tasked with defending against CBRN and IED threats with the essential practical, scientific and political information. Access the current and previous issues of the magazine by registering as a member." url: "https://cbrneworld.com/news/subscribers/obituary-michael-elleman" date: "2026-07-30T21:42:27+00:00" language: "en-GB" --- # Obituary - Michael Elleman Written by Zoe Rutherford on 08 March 2021. Originally published in NK News Michael S. Elleman, a world-renowned missile expert who spent much of his life trying to stop advances to North Korea’s nuclear program, died of cancer at George Washington University Hospital on Saturday, Feb. 20. He was 62 years old. A former scientist-turned-U.N.-missile-inspector and analyst, Elleman was known for his gift of explaining North Korea’s complex missile systems to politicians, journalists and countless students and mentees in an approachable way. “He was the most generous, kind and sharing colleague there could be,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, who was Elleman’s colleague and friend at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) for more than 10 years. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Elleman spent more than two decades as a staff scientist at Lockheed Martin’s Research and Development Laboratory. He then took his expertise to the United Nations’ Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, surveying weapons inspections missions in Iraq. Elleman next moved to consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in Russia, where he worked on nuclear weapons reduction projects funded by the U.S. government. That’s where he met his wife, Tatiana, and the two later had a child named Nikita in 2010. “Mike married at kind of a later age, but it was a marriage made in heaven,” Fitzpatrick said. “They loved each other a lot.” Elleman joined the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2009, having a senior role in its Bahrain office and expanding his reputation as a missile systems expert and analyst through prolific research and collaboration. He returned to Washington, D.C. and later became the IISS’ head of non-proliferation and nuclear policy in 2019. It was at IISS that Elleman developed the role that many remember him for — people who worked with him said he was a consistent, smart, approachable source of analysis after missile tests. “He had the gift of helping non-technical experts understand the technical aspects of missiles … The information they want to know and need to know,” said Daniel Pinkston, a lecturer at Troy University and one of Elleman’s many missile analyst peers. “He was a great teacher, which arguably is the greatest compliment anyone can have.” According to others in the industry, Elleman’s interest and vigor for the subject shined through his small acts, like his “love” of creating missile payload range charts that became a great help to some of his mentees. “He was able to teach me an incredible amount while also making me feel like a respected colleague and friend, which is a somewhat rare experience for an unpaid, undergrad intern,” said Andrew Coco, one of Elleman’s last research interns. “It speaks not only to his status as a top expert, but his incredible character as a person … That vote of confidence from a renowned expert in the field, who I looked up to, meant a lot at a time where I didn’t have a ton of \[confidence\] myself.” Ankit Panda, a Stanton senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and contributing analyst to *NK Pro*, remembers Elleman as one of the first analysts to positively identify the North Korean “March 18 Revolution” liquid propellant engine as a Soviet RD-250 variant. “That was an important finding at the time,” he said. According to Fitzpatrick, Elleman’s identification of the engine brought on one of his toughest career challenges. “His wife, Tanya, is Russian born — her parents still live in Russia … Internet trolls were attacking her and her father, and \[Michael’s\] first impulse was to protect them,” he recalled. “He pulled out of social media for a period of time. It was a traumatic experience for him. As the result of trying to be intellectually rigorous, he \[brought\] on attacks on his family.” In addition to his wife and son, Elleman is survived by his mother, Irene, and his younger brother, Bruce, both of whom live in California, according to Fitzpatrick. His older brother, Daniel Jr., and his sister-in-law, Hiromi, both live in Oregon. As word of Elleman’s passing began to surface online on Sunday, North Korea watchers penned tributes to a man they saw as a gentleman and a nonproliferation giant — a missile expert’s expert. “In a room full of people, he was the one who stood up and gave her his chair when he saw a pregnant woman,” Fitzpatrick said, referring to an anecdote about Elleman shared online. “I thought, ‘That was Mike.’” ## Schema ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "News", "item": "https://cbrneworld.com/news" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Subscribers", "item": "https://cbrneworld.com/news/subscribers" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Obituary - Michael Elleman", "item": "https://cbrneworld.com/news/subscribers/obituary-michael-elleman" } ] } ``` ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "NewsArticle", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://cbrneworld.com/news/subscribers/obituary-michael-elleman" }, "headline": "Obituary - Michael Elleman", "description": "Originally published in NK News Michael S. Elleman, a world-renowned missile expert who spent much of his life trying to stop advances to North Korea’s nuclear program, died of cancer at George Washington University Hospital on Saturday, Feb. 20. He was 62 years old. A former scientist-turned-U.N.-missile-inspector and analyst, Elleman was known for his gift of explaining North Korea’s complex missile systems to politicians, journalists and countless students and mentees in an approachable way. “He was the most generous, kind and sharing colleague there could be,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, who was Elleman’s colleague and friend at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) for more than 10 years. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Elleman spent more than two decades as a staff scientist at Lockheed Martin’s Research and Development Laboratory. He then took his expertise to the United Nations’ Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, surveying weapons inspections missions in Iraq. Elleman next moved to consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in Russia, where he worked on nuclear weapons reduction projects funded by the U.S. government. That’s where he met his wife, Tatiana, and the two later had a child named Nikita in 2010. “Mike married at kind of a later age, but it was a marriage made in heaven,” Fitzpatrick said. “They loved each other a lot.” Elleman joined the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2009, having a senior role in its Bahrain office and expanding his reputation as a missile systems expert and analyst through prolific research and collaboration. He returned to Washington, D.C. and later became the IISS’ head of non-proliferation and nuclear policy in 2019. It was at IISS that Elleman developed the role that many remember him for — people who worked with him said he was a consistent, smart, approachable source of analysis after missile tests. “He had the gift of helping non-technical experts understand the technical aspects of missiles … The information they want to know and need to know,” said Daniel Pinkston, a lecturer at Troy University and one of Elleman’s many missile analyst peers. “He was a great teacher, which arguably is the greatest compliment anyone can have.” According to others in the industry, Elleman’s interest and vigor for the subject shined through his small acts, like his “love” of creating missile payload range charts that became a great help to some of his mentees. “He was able to teach me an incredible amount while also making me feel like a respected colleague and friend, which is a somewhat rare experience for an unpaid, undergrad intern,” said Andrew Coco, one of Elleman’s last research interns. “It speaks not only to his status as a top expert, but his incredible character as a person … That vote of confidence from a renowned expert in the field, who I looked up to, meant a lot at a time where I didn’t have a ton of [confidence] myself.” Ankit Panda, a Stanton senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and contributing analyst to NK Pro, remembers Elleman as one of the first analysts to positively identify the North Korean “March 18 Revolution” liquid propellant engine as a Soviet RD-250 variant. “That was an important finding at the time,” he said. According to Fitzpatrick, Elleman’s identification of the engine brought on one of his toughest career challenges. “His wife, Tanya, is Russian born — her parents still live in Russia … Internet trolls were attacking her and her father, and [Michael’s] first impulse was to protect them,” he recalled. “He pulled out of social media for a period of time. It was a traumatic experience for him. As the result of trying to be intellectually rigorous, he [brought] on attacks on his family.” In addition to his wife and son, Elleman is survived by his mother, Irene, and his younger brother, Bruce, both of whom live in California, according to Fitzpatrick. His older brother, Daniel Jr., and his sister-in-law, Hiromi, both live in Oregon. As word of Elleman’s passing began to surface online on Sunday, North Korea watchers penned tributes to a man they saw as a gentleman and a nonproliferation giant — a missile expert’s expert. “In a room full of people, he was the one who stood up and gave her his chair when he saw a pregnant woman,” Fitzpatrick said, referring to an anecdote about Elleman shared online. “I thought, ‘That was Mike.’”  ", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://cbrneworld.com/" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "CBRNe World Magazine", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://cbrneworld.com/images/default/Asset%201.png" } }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Zoe Rutherford", "url": "https://cbrneworld.com/news/subscribers/obituary-michael-elleman" }, "datePublished": "2021-03-08T10:58:37+00:00", "dateCreated": "2021-03-08T10:58:37+00:00", "dateModified": "2021-03-08T10:58:37+00:00" } ```