Word: rotblat
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...often such courageous behavior is not rewarded. Last week, however, it was--handsomely if somewhat belatedly. The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave its 1995 Peace Prize jointly to Rotblat, 86, and the Pugwash Conferences he still presides over. The conferences--named for the small Nova Scotia fishing village where they began--were praised by the committee for recognizing "the responsibility of scientists for their inventions" and for bringing together "scientists and decision makers to collaborate across political divides on constructive proposals for reducing the nuclear threat." It was the third Peace Prize to be given to scientists for nuclear-disarmament work...
...selection of Rotblat and Pugwash, while something of a surprise, comes at a particularly opportune time. It is 50 years since atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 200,000 people. And the French and Chinese governments continue to defy international protests by conducting nuclear tests. "One of the reasons for the prize is a sort of protest against testing of nuclear weapons, and nuclear arms in general," acknowledged committee chairman Francis Sejersted...
...trying to stop the French tests by sailing small boats into the target zone, hailed it as a "fantastic decision." The French government, on the other hand, congratulated the winners and applauded the idea of disarmament--but insisted that its tests would continue to ensure a worldwide "security climate." Rotblat, reached by the Nobel committee at his home in the London suburb of Cricklewood, was beaming. "When I woke up this morning," the professor emeritus at the University of London told reporters, "I didn't expect to become such a celebrity...
...trim, sprightly Rotblat has been a celebrity among antinuclear activists for nearly half a century. He first started wrestling with the moral implications of atomic weaponry as a young refugee from Nazi-occupied Poland, working at the University of Liverpool in the early 1940s. "For me," he wrote in an article for the Hiroshima anniversary this past summer, "the decision to become involved in developing the Bomb was painful, and for almost a year I struggled with my conscience. Eventually I concluded, as did most of the other scientists, that we needed to make the Bomb so that it should...
...moved to the U.S. in 1944 to join the American A-bomb effort, his doubts deepened almost at once. When he heard U.S. General Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project's supervisor, say that the real reason for continuing was to keep the Russians in line after the war, Rotblat was "deeply shocked." When he quit, "I was accused of being a spy, and left only after agreeing not to talk to anybody about my reason for leaving...