Joseph Rotblat

Sir Joseph Rotblat (1908 - 2005) was Professor of Physics at the University of London at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College and the hospital’s Chief Physicist from 1950 to 1976. In 1955, Professor Rotblat was one of the eleven signatories of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which invited scientists from around the world to ward off the danger of nuclear weapons being used again. He founded the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in 1957 and served as its secretary-general and later as its president for forty years. In 1995, Dr. Rotblat and Pugwash received the Nobel Prize for Peace. His book-length dialogue with Daisaku Ikeda, A Quest for Global Peace: Rotblat and Ikeda on War, Ethics and the Nuclear Threat, was published in 2007.

Dr. Rotblat is considered an especially important figure in the field of disarmament because he was among the top scientists working on the Manhattan Project, the US endeavor to develop the first atomic bomb during WWII. In 1944, when it became clear that the Germans had given up on the development of their own bomb, Dr. Rotblat resigned from the project. For someone on the “inside” to then work for the bomb’s abolition was a significant event. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he stated: “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.”