Josephrotblat1908–2005

NEWS & VIEWS NATURE|Vol 437|29 September 2005

OBITUARY Joseph Rotblat 1908–2005 Physicist who committed his life to the cause of nuclear disarmament.

The closing words of Joseph Rotblat’s lecture in 1945 appalled Rotblat, and his life’s on acceptance of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize mission began. He worked at first through sum up his nature. “The quest for a war-free the Atomic Scientists Association to educate world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the public about nuclear matters, and the process we learn how to achieve it by love campaigned for the international control of rather than by fear, by kindness rather than nuclear energy. He switched his research to by compulsion; if in the process we learn to the medical applications of nuclear physics combine the essential with the enjoyable, and joined the staff of St Bartholomew’s the expedient with the benevolent, the Hospital Medical College at the University practical with the beautiful, this will be of London in 1949, becoming professor of an extra incentive to embark on this great physics in 1950. There he explored the use task. Above all, remember your humanity.” of linear accelerators for radiotherapy, and Joseph Rotblat died on 31 August, aged 96. produced several landmark studies with Rotblat was born in Warsaw on 4 Patricia Lindop on the effects of high-energy November 1908 into a middle-class Jewish radiation on living tissue. But it was an family. The family was left impoverished by American bomb test in 1954, which the First World War: at the age of 15, Rotblat showered a Japanese fishing boat with worked as an electrician during the day and radioactive fallout, that made Rotblat an studied physics in the evening. He won an international figure. He calculated that the the initiator of the Stockholm International open scholarship to the Free University of bomb had been vastly more ‘dirty’ than the Peace Research Institute. He participated in Poland, later obtaining a doctorate from the public had been told. His move to bring this the Medical Exchange Programme between University of Warsaw with research on the matter into the open horrified government Britain and the Soviet Union, and was inelastic scattering of neutrons. It was while circles, which considered that all nuclear largely responsible for the comprehensive working in the radiological laboratory of the matters should be secret. reports of the World Health Organization Scientific Society of Warsaw that he heard Around this time Rotblat met Bertrand of 1984 and 1987 on the effects of nuclear of the discovery of nuclear fission. He then Russell, who also was becoming increasingly war on health and health services.SYGMA Shortly PELLETIER/CORBIS M. himself showed experimentally that neutrons concerned about the hydrogen bomb. In 1955 before his death, Rotblat had become are emitted in the process, and envisaged Rotblat was one of 11 prominent signatories increasingly concerned about developments a divergent chain reaction with a vast release of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, a stark in nuclear policy, particularly in the United of energy. This, he realized, could result in statement of the dangers of nuclear war. States. He contacted leaders of other non- an explosion of unprecedented power. The manifesto led to the initial Pugwash governmental organizations to initiate the Rotblat moved to England in 1939 to work Conference in 1957, in the village of Pugwash Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness under James Chadwick in Liverpool, first on the northern shore of Nova Scotia, at Programme, launched in London in 2004 on the university’s new cyclotron particle which scientists from across the world by himself and the former Soviet president accelerator, and then on the feasibility of gathered to discuss how to avert a nuclear Mikhail Gorbachev. the atomic bomb. In Poland he had married catastrophe. It was the first of more than In addition to numerous papers on nuclear a student of literature, Tola Gryn, and he 300 international conferences and workshops, physics and radiation biology, Rotblat wrote, returned to Warsaw to fetch her. But she in which participants speak as individuals or co-wrote, more than 40 books on various developed appendicitis, and Rotblat had to whose remarks are unattributable. aspects of the control of nuclear weapons and leave for England again on his own. Before Throughout his life, Rotblat was a driving the prevention of war. Alongside the Nobel she could follow him, Germany invaded force in the Pugwash organization, becoming prize, he received the Bertrand Russell Poland and war began. Despite all his efforts its secretary-general (1957–73), president Society Award in 1983 and the Albert Einstein he was unable to get her out. She died during (1988–97) and emeritus president. Peace Prize in 1992. Among British honours, the war without his seeing her again. Since its inception, Pugwash has been one he was appointed a Commander of the In 1943, Rotblat followed Chadwick to of the foremost advocates of détente and British Empire in 1965, and knighted in 1998. Los Alamos National Laboratory in New disarmament in the nuclear age. It kept lines Rotblat was a towering figure in the Mexico, to work on the Manhattan Project of communication open during the cold war struggle for peace. He was brilliant, energetic, that developed the atomic bomb. The and helped lay the foundation for important determined and eloquent: a man of utter project’s morality disquieted him, but he arms-control treaties. It provided the first integrity and great humanity, who committed feared that the Germans would develop links between Henry Kissinger and the his life to the pursuit of a saner, safer world. the bomb first, and believed the Allies North Vietnamese in the Vietnam war, and In his autobiography, Bertrand Russell said of must be able to threaten retaliation. was an informal channel for officials and Rotblat’s work for disarmament: “If ever these When intelligence showed that German public figures in the Arab–Israeli, Korean evils are eradicated, his name should stand progress was minimal, he resigned from the and Kashmiri conflicts. In 1995, the Nobel very high indeed among the heroes.” ■ Manhattan Project on grounds of conscience Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Pugwash Sally Milne and Robert Hinde and returned to Liverpool. After the war he and to Joseph Rotblat. Sally Milne and Robert Hinde are on the took British citizenship, deciding not to But Rotblat’s pacifist activities extended executive committee of Pugwash UK, return to communist Poland. beyond Pugwash. He co-founded the UK 63A Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3BJ, UK. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and was e-mail: [email protected]