[Joseph Rotblat was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan
Project, believing it was necessary in view of German atom bomb
development. When he learned the German project was unsuccessful, he
resigned and became a life-long campaigner for disarmament]
[[link removed]]

THE MANHATTAN PROJECT SCIENTIST WHO QUIT  
[[link removed]]


 

September 28, 2005
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Joseph Rotblat was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project,
believing it was necessary in view of German atom bomb development.
When he learned the German project was unsuccessful, he resigned and
became a life-long campaigner for disarmament _

,

 

[For a related new documentary, see Lifting the Fog: The Bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
[[link removed]]
which tells the story behind the atomic bomb and the decision to use
it against Japan. It includes interviews with historian Gar Alperowitz
(“The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb”) and re-enactments of the
decision making process. -- moderator]

1. Pugwash Obituary for Joseph Rotblat
2. Nobel Peace Prize Lecture: Remember Your Humanity

Joseph Rotblat 1908-2005

by Sally Milne and Robert Hinde
September 25, 2005
Nature [[link removed]]

The closing words of Joseph Rotblat's lecture on acceptance of the
1995 Nobel Peace Prize sum up his nature. “The quest for a war-free
world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn
how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than
by compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential
with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical
with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this
great task. Above all, remember your humanity.” Joseph Rotblat died
on 31 August, aged 96.

Rotblat was born in Warsaw on 4 November 1908 into a middle-class
Jewish family. The family was left impoverished by the First World
War: at the age of 15, Rotblat worked as an electrician during the day
and studied physics in the evening. He won an open scholarship to the
Free University of Poland, later obtaining a doctorate from the
University of Warsaw with research on the inelastic scattering of
neutrons. It was while working in the radiological laboratory of the
Scientific Society of Warsaw that he heard of the discovery of nuclear
fission. He then himself showed experimentally that neutrons are
emitted in the process, and envisaged a divergent chain reaction with
a vast release of energy. This, he realized, could result in an
explosion of unprecedented power.

Rotblat moved to England in 1939 to work under James Chadwick in
Liverpool, first on the university's new cyclotron particle
accelerator, and then on the feasibility of the atomic bomb. In Poland
he had married a student of literature, Tola Gryn, and he returned to
Warsaw to fetch her. But she developed appendicitis, and Rotblat had
to leave for England again on his own. Before she could follow him,
Germany invaded Poland and war began. Despite all his efforts he was
unable to get her out. She died during the war without his seeing her
again.

In 1943, Rotblat followed Chadwick to Los Alamos National Laboratory
in New Mexico, to work on the Manhattan Project that developed the
atomic bomb. The project's morality disquieted him, but he feared that
the Germans would develop the bomb first, and believed the Allies must
be able to threaten retaliation. When intelligence showed that German
progress was minimal, he resigned from the Manhattan Project on
grounds of conscience and returned to Liverpool. After the war he took
British citizenship, deciding not to return to communist Poland.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 appalled Rotblat, and
his life's mission began. He worked at first through the Atomic
Scientists Association to educate the public about nuclear matters,
and campaigned for the international control of nuclear energy. He
switched his research to the medical applications of nuclear physics
and joined the staff of St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College at
the University of London in 1949, becoming professor of physics in
1950. There he explored the use of linear accelerators for
radiotherapy, and produced several landmark studies with Patricia
Lindop on the effects of high-energy radiation on living tissue. But
it was an American bomb test in 1954, which showered a Japanese
fishing boat with radioactive fallout, that made Rotblat an
international figure. He calculated that the bomb had been vastly more
‘dirty’ than the public had been told. His move to bring this
matter into the open horrified government circles, which considered
that all nuclear matters should be secret.

Around this time Rotblat met Bertrand Russell, who also was becoming
increasingly concerned about the hydrogen bomb. In 1955 Rotblat was
one of 11 prominent signatories of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, a
stark statement of the dangers of nuclear war. The manifesto led to
the initial Pugwash Conference in 1957, in the village of Pugwash on
the northern shore of Nova Scotia, at which scientists from across the
world gathered to discuss how to avert a nuclear catastrophe. It was
the first of more than 300 international conferences and workshops, in
which participants speak as individuals whose remarks are
unattributable. Throughout his life, Rotblat was a driving force in
the Pugwash organization, becoming its secretary-general (1957–73),
president (1988–97) and emeritus president.

Since its inception, Pugwash has been one of the foremost advocates of
détente and disarmament in the nuclear age. It kept lines of
communication open during the cold war and helped lay the foundation
for important arms-control treaties. It provided the first links
between Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam war,
and was an informal channel for officials and public figures in the
Arab–Israeli, Korean and Kashmiri conflicts. In 1995, the Nobel
Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Pugwash and to Joseph Rotblat.

But Rotblat's pacifist activities extended beyond Pugwash. He
co-founded the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and was the
initiator of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. He
participated in the Medical Exchange Programme between Britain and the
Soviet Union, and was largely responsible for the comprehensive
reports of the World Health Organization of 1984 and 1987 on the
effects of nuclear war on health and health services. Shortly before
his death, Rotblat had become increasingly concerned about
developments in nuclear policy, particularly in the United States. He
contacted leaders of other non-governmental organizations to initiate
the Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness Programme, launched in
London in 2004 by himself and the former Soviet president Mikhail
Gorbachev.

In addition to numerous papers on nuclear physics and radiation
biology, Rotblat wrote, or co-wrote, more than 40 books on various
aspects of the control of nuclear weapons and the prevention of war.
Alongside the Nobel prize, he received the Bertrand Russell Society
Award in 1983 and the Albert Einstein Peace Prize in 1992. Among
British honours, he was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in
1965, and knighted in 1998.

Rotblat was a towering figure in the struggle for peace. He was
brilliant, energetic, determined and eloquent: a man of utter
integrity and great humanity, who committed his life to the pursuit of
a saner, safer world. In his autobiography, Bertrand Russell said of
Rotblat's work for disarmament: “If ever these evils are eradicated,
his name should stand very high indeed among the heroes.”

Nobel Lecture: Remember Your Humanity

Joseph Rotblat
1995
Nobel Foundation [[link removed]]

At this momentous event in my life – the acceptance of the Nobel
Peace Prize – I want to speak as a scientist, but also as a human
being. From my earliest days I had a passion for science. But science,
the exercise of the supreme power of the human intellect, was always
linked in my mind with benefit to people. I saw science as being in
harmony with humanity. I did not imagine that the second half of my
life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity
created by science.

The practical release of nuclear energy was the outcome of many years
of experimental and theoretical research. It had great potential for
the common good. But the first the general public learned about the
discovery was the news of the destruction of Hiroshima by the atom
bomb. A splendid achievement of science and technology had turned
malign. Science became identified with death and destruction.

It is painful to me to admit that this depiction of science was
deserved. The decision to use the atom bomb on Japanese cities, and
the consequent buildup of enormous nuclear arsenals, was made by
governments, on the basis of political and military perceptions. But
scientists on both sides of the iron curtain played a very significant
role in maintaining the momentum of the nuclear arms race throughout
the four decades of the Cold War.

The role of scientists in the nuclear arms race was expressed bluntly
by Lord Zuckerman, for many years Chief Scientific Adviser to the
British Government:1
[[link removed]]

_When it comes to nuclear weapons … it is the man in the laboratory
who at the start proposes that for this or that arcane reason it would
be useful to improve an old or to devise a new nuclear warhead. It is
he, the technician, not the commander in the field, who is at the
heart of the arms race._

Long before the terrifying potential of the arms race was recognized,
there was a widespread instinctive abhorrence of nuclear weapons, and
a strong desire to get rid of them. Indeed, the very first resolution
of the General Assembly of the United Nations – adopted unanimously
– called for the elimination of nuclear weapons. But the world was
then polarized by the bitter ideological struggle between East and
West. There was no chance to meet this call. The chief task was to
stop the arms race before it brought utter disaster. However, after
the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union,
any rationale for having nuclear weapons disappeared. The quest for
their total elimination could be resumed. But the nuclear powers still
cling tenaciously to their weapons.

Let me remind you that nuclear disarmament is not just an ardent
desire of the people, as expressed in many resolutions of the United
Nations. It is a legal commitment by the five official nuclear states,
entered into when they signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Only a few
months ago, when the indefinite extension of the Treaty was agreed,
the nuclear powers committed themselves again to complete nuclear
disarmament. This is still their declared goal. But the declarations
are not matched by their policies, and this divergence seems to be
intrinsic.

Since the end of the Cold War two main nuclear powers have begun to
make big reductions in their nuclear arsenals. Each of them is
dismantling about 2,000 nuclear warheads a year. If this program
continued, all nuclear warheads could be dismantled in little over ten
years from now. We have the technical means to create a
nuclear-weapon-free world in about a decade. Alas, the present program
does not provide for this. When the START 2 treaty has been
implemented – and remember it has not yet been ratified – we will
be left with some 15,000 nuclear warheads, active and in reserve.
Fifteen thousand weapons with an average yield of 20 Hiroshima bombs.

Unless there is a change in the basic philosophy, we will not see a
reduction of nuclear arsenals to zero for a very long time, if ever.
The present basic philosophy is nuclear deterrence. This was stated
clearly in the US Nuclear Posture Review which
concluded: _“Post-Cold War environment requires nuclear
deterrence,”_2
[[link removed]] and
this is echoed by other nuclear states. Nuclear weapons are kept as a
hedge against some unspecified dangers.

This policy is simply an inertial continuation from the Cold War era.
The Cold War is over but Cold War thinking survives. Then, we were
told that a world war was prevented by the existence of nuclear
weapons. Now, we are told that nuclear weapons prevent all kinds of
war. These are arguments that purport to prove a negative. I am
reminded of a story told in my boyhood at the time when radio
communication began.

Two wise men were arguing about the ancient civilization in their
respective countries. One said: ‘my country has a long history of
technological development: we have carried out deep excavations and
found a wire, which shows that already in the old days we had the
telegraph’. The other man retorted: ‘we too made excavations; we
dug much deeper than you and found … nothing, which proves that
already in those days we had wireless communication’!

There is no direct evidence that nuclear weapons prevented a world
war. Conversely, it is known that they nearly caused one. The most
terrifying moment in my life was October 1962, during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. I did not know all the facts – we have learned only
recently how close we were to war – but I knew enough to make me
tremble. The lives of millions of people were about to end abruptly;
millions of others were to suffer a lingering death; much of our
civilization was to be destroyed. It all hung on the decision of one
man, Nikita Khrushchev: would he or would he not yield to the U.S.
ultimatum?3
[[link removed]] This
is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war
which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.

As for the assertion that nuclear weapons prevent wars, how many more
wars are needed to refute this arguments? Tens of millions have died
in the many wars that have taken place since 1945. In a number of them
nuclear states were directly involved. In two they were actually
defeated. Having nuclear weapons was of no use to them.

To sum up, there is no evidence that a world without nuclear weapons
would be a dangerous world. On the contrary, it would be a safer
world, as I will show later.

We are told that the possession of nuclear weapons – in some cases
even the testing of these weapons – is essential for national
security. But this argument can be made by other countries as well. If
the militarily most powerful – and least threatened – states need
nuclear weapons for their security, how can one deny such security to
countries that are truly insecure? The present nuclear policy is a
recipe for proliferation. It is a policy for disaster.

To prevent this disaster – for the sake of humanity – we must get
rid of all nuclear weapons.

Achieving this goal will take time, but it will never happen unless we
make a start. Some essential steps towards it can be taken now.
Several studies, and a number of public statements by senior military
and political personalities, testify that – except for disputes
between the present nuclear states – all military conflicts, as well
as threats to peace, can be dealt with using conventional weapons.
This means that the only function of nuclear weapons, while they
exist, is to deter a nuclear attack. All nuclear weapon states should
now recognize that this is so, and declare – in Treaty form – that
they will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. This would open
the way to the gradual, mutual reduction of nuclear arsenals, down to
zero. It would also open the way for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
This would be universal – it would prohibit all possession of
nuclear weapons.

We will need to work out the necessary verification system to
safeguard the Convention. A Pugwash study produced suggestions on
these matters.4
[[link removed]] The
mechanisms for negotiating such a Convention already exists. Entering
into negotiations does not commit the parties. There is no reason why
they should not begin now. If not now, when?

So I ask the nuclear powers to abandon the out-of-date thinking of the
Cold War period and take a fresh look. Above all, I appeal to them to
bear in mind the long-term threat that nuclear weapons pose to
humankind and to begin action towards their elimination. Remember your
duty to humanity.

My second appeal is to my fellow scientists. I described earlier the
disgraceful role played by a few scientists, caricatured as ‘Dr
Strangeloves,’5
[[link removed]] in
fueling the arms race. They did great damage to the image of science.

On the other side there are the scientists, in Pugwash and other
bodies, who devote much of their time and ingenuity to averting the
dangers created by advances in science and technology. However, they
embrace only a small part of the scientific community. I want to
address the scientific community as a whole.

You are doing fundamental work, pushing forward the frontiers of
knowledge, but often you do it without giving much thought to the
impact of your work on society. Precepts such as ‘science is
neutral’ or ‘science has nothing to do with politics,’ still
prevail. They are remnants of the ivory tower mentality, although the
ivory tower was finally demolished by the Hiroshima bomb.

Here, for instance, is a question: Should any scientist work on the
development of weapons of mass destruction? A clear “no” was the
answer recently given by Hans Bethe
[[link removed]].
Professor Bethe, a Nobel laureate, is the most senior of the surviving
members of the Manhattan Project.6
[[link removed]] On
the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Hiroshima, he issued a
statement that I will quote in full.

_As the Director of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, I
participated at the most senior level in the World War II Manhattan
Project that produced the first atomic weapons._

_Now, at age 88, I am one of the few remaining such senior persons
alive. Looking back at the half century since that time, I feel the
most intense relief that these weapons have not been used since World
War II, mixed with the horror that tens of thousands of such weapons
have been built since that time – one hundred times more than any of
us at Los Alamos could ever had imagined._

_Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of
nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development
still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can
agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still
influence this process by withholding their skills._

_Accordingly, I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and
desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing
further nuclear weapons – and, for that matter, other weapons of
potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons._

If all scientists heeded this call there would be no more new nuclear
warheads; no French scientists at Mururoa:7
[[link removed]] no
new chemical and biological poisons. The arms race would be truly
over.

But there are other areas of scientific research that may directly or
indirectly lead to harm to society. This calls for constant vigilance.
The purpose of some government or industrial research is sometimes
concealed, and misleading information is presented to the public. It
should be the duty of scientists to expose such malfeasance.
“Whistle-blowing” should become part of the scientist’s ethos.
This may bring reprisals; a price to be paid for one’s convictions.
The price may be very heavy, as illustrated by the disproportionately
severe punishment of Mordechai Vanunu.8
[[link removed]] I
believe he has suffered enough.

The time has come to formulate guidelines for the ethical conduct of
scientist, perhaps in the form of a voluntary Hippocratic Oath. This
would be particularly valuable for young scientists when they embark
on a scientific career. The US Student Pugwash Group has taken up this
idea – and that is very heartening.

At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of
society, when the destiny of the whole of mankind may hinge on the
results of scientific research, it is incumbent on all scientists to
be fully conscious of that role, and conduct themselves accordingly. I
appeal to my fellow scientists to remember their responsibility to
humanity.

My third appeal is to my fellow citizens in all countries: Help us to
establish lasting peace in the world.

I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the
development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in
history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a
single act. Indeed, the whole human species is endangered, by nuclear
weapons or by other means of wholesale destruction which further
advances in science are likely to produce.

I have argued that we must eliminate nuclear weapons. While this would
remove the immediate threat, it will not provide permanent security.
Nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented. The knowledge of how to make
them cannot be erased. Even in a nuclear-weapon-free world, should any
of the great powers become involved in a military confrontation, they
would be tempted to rebuild their nuclear arsenals. That would still
be a better situation than the one we have now, because the rebuilding
would take a considerable time, and in that time the dispute might be
settled. A nuclear-weapon-free world would be safer than the present
one. But the danger of the ultimate catastrophe would still be there.

The only way to prevent it is to abolish war altogether. War must
cease to be an admissible social institution. We must learn to resolve
our disputes by means other than military confrontation.

This need was recognized forty years ago when we said in the Russell-
Einstein Manifesto:

_Here then is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful,
and inescapable: shall we put an end to the human race: or shall
mankind renounce war?_

The abolition of war is also the commitment of the nuclear weapon
states: Article VI of the NPT calls for a treaty on general and
complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

Any international treaty entails some surrender of national
sovereignty, and is generally unpopular. As we said in the
Russell-Einstein Manifesto: _“The abolition of war will demand
distasteful limitations of national sovereignty.”_ Whatever system
of governance is eventually adopted, it is important that it carries
the people with it. We need to convey the message that safeguarding
our common property, humankind, will require developing in each of us
a new loyalty: a loyalty to mankind. It calls for the nurturing of a
feeling of belonging to the human race. We have to become world
citizens.

Notwithstanding the fragmentation that has occurred since the end of
the Cold War, and the many wars for recognition of national or ethnic
identities, I believe that the prospects for the acceptance of this
new loyalty are now better than at the time of the Russell-Einstein
Manifesto. This is so largely because of the enormous progress made by
science and technology during these 40 years. The fantastic advances
in communication and transportation have shrunk our globe. All nations
of the world have become close neighbors. Modern information
techniques enable us to learn instantly about every event in every
part of the globe. We can talk to each other via the various networks.
This facility will improve enormously with time, because the
achievements so far have only scratched the surface. Technology is
driving us together. In many ways we are becoming like one family.

In advocating the new loyalty to mankind I am not suggesting that we
give up national loyalties. Each of us has loyalties to several groups
– from the smallest, the family, to the largest, at present, the
nation. Many of these groups provide protection for their members.
With the global threats resulting from science and technology, the
whole of humankind now needs protection. We have to extend our loyalty
to the whole of the human race.

What we are advocating in Pugwash, a war-free world, will be seen by
many as a Utopian dream. It is not Utopian. There already exist in the
world large regions, for example, the European Union, within which war
is inconceivable. What is needed is to extend these to cover the
world’s major powers.

In any case, we have no choice. The alternative is unacceptable. Let
me quote the last passage of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto:

_We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity
and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open for a new
paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal
death._

The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if
in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear,
by kindness rather than by compulsion; if in the process we learn to
combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the
benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra
incentive to embark on this great task.

Above all, remember your humanity.

1. Baron Solly Zuckerman of Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, held a number of
such governmental appointments during World War II and after.

2. More recently, in the Pugwash Newsletter of October 1998 Rotblat
refers to a recently leaked secret Presidential Decision Directive
outlining nuclear strategy, which requires the retention of nuclear
weapons for the foreseeable future as a basis for the national
security of the United States.

3. In 1962 the Soviet Union moved to install nuclear missiles in Cuba
in order to deter any attack on Cuba by the United States. The United
States demanded that the missiles be withdrawn, and both the United
States and the Soviet Union were on the brink of a nuclear war.
However, Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet premier and first secretary of the
Communist Party, agreed to withdraw the missiles, and the crisis
passed.

4. Rotblat refers to the Pugwash volume, Verification: Monitoring
Disarmament, (1991), written and edited by high calibre experts from
both the West and the Soviet Union, which illustrates how Pugwash
scientists of different ideological backgrounds could cooperate in
approaching a sensitive security issue. See Selected Bibliography
below.

5. The 1964 black comedy anti-war film about the dropping of the bomb
was entitled “Dr. Strangelove Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned
to Love the Bomb”.

6. Hans Albrecht Bethe, born in Germany in 1906, resettled in the
United States in 1935 to teach at Cornell University. He was at Los
Alamos from 1943-46, and in 1958 he was scientific adviser to the
United States at the nuclear test ban talks in Geneva. In 1967 he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for his contributions to the
theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the
energy production in stars”.

7. The South Pacific atoll of Mururoa in French Polynesia was the site
of a series of French underwater nuclear bomb tests, which began in
1995 and ended in January 1996.

8. An Israeli technician, working at the Demona nuclear reactor, felt
that Israel’s secret production of plutonium there for nuclear
weapons should be known by Israelis and the world, and as a matter of
conscience he made the information public in 1985. He was lured to
Rome by Israeli secret agents, kidnapped and brought back to Israel
where he was secretly tried, convicted, and sentenced to eighteen
years in prison. He spent at least the first 12 years in solitary
confinement, while a worldwide campaign continued for his liberation.
Adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, he has
often been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

From _Nobel Lectures
[[link removed]],
Peace 1991-1995_, Editor Irwin Abrams, World Scientific Publishing
Co., Singapore, 1999

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1995

* Manhattan Project
[[link removed]]
* Nuclear Disarmament
[[link removed]]
* Oppenheimer
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]