- Person
- Joseph Rotblat
- Lived
- 1908–2005
- Field
- Physics, disarmament
- From
- Polish-British
The story
After leaving the Manhattan Project, the Polish-Jewish physicist Joseph Rotblat became professor of physics at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in London, where from 1950 to 1976 he studied the effects of radiation on living things. That work led him to the problem of nuclear fallout, and especially to radioactive strontium-90 and the safe limits of exposure to radiation.
In 1954 the United States tested a hydrogen bomb, Castle Bravo, at Bikini Atoll. A Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, was showered with radioactive ash, and Japanese scientists collected data from it. The official position was that more powerful bombs did not bring a corresponding increase in radioactivity. Using the Japanese data, Rotblat deduced in 1955 that the bomb had three stages and that its final fission stage multiplied the radioactivity released many times over, far beyond what had been stated. His paper was taken up by the press and fed the public debate that led to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which ended atmospheric testing by its signatories.
In 1955 Rotblat was also the youngest signatory of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, warning that nuclear war threatened humanity, and he chaired the press conference that launched it. With Bertrand Russell he organised the first Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs in 1957 in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, and he served as its secretary-general until 1973 and later as its president. Pugwash brought scientists from East and West together at the height of the Cold War, when official contacts were frozen.
The Pugwash Conferences are credited with laying the groundwork for the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. In 1995 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Rotblat and Pugwash for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms.
Why it matters
The end of atmospheric nuclear testing spared the world decades of global radioactive fallout, and the Pugwash channels Rotblat built helped produce treaties that still limit nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
About Joseph Rotblat
Warsaw-born Jewish physicist, the only scientist to quit the Manhattan Project on grounds of conscience, who led the Pugwash movement for nuclear arms control. Nobel 1995.
More about Joseph Rotblat
Sources
- Joseph Rotblat Wikipedia
- Joseph Rotblat, Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Joseph Rotblat, Facts NobelPrize.org
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