“I saw science as being in harmony with humanity.” When nuclear physicist and peace activist Joseph
Rotblat accepted the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 88, he opened his
address with those words. Nothing in his
long career exemplifies his outlook more than his decision in 1944 to quit the
Manhattan Project at Los Alamos for reasons of conscience – the only physicist
to do so.
Rotblat was born in Warsaw in 1908 into a relatively
prosperous Jewish family. With the
beginning of World War I, however, things became difficult for them as they
began to endure poverty and hunger.
Rotblat found work as an electrician but dreamed of becoming a
physicist. He managed to enroll as a
student at the Free University of Poland, where he earned an MA degree in
physics in 1932, and earned a doctorate
in physics at the University of Warsaw in 1938.
He then held two positions: Research Fellow in the Radiological
Laboratory of the Scientific Society of Warsaw, and in 1937, assistant Director
of the Atomic Physics Institute of the Free University of Poland.
Early in 1939, Rotblat began to experiment with uranium. That year he learned of the fission of
uranium and devised an experiment bombarding uranium with neutrons to determine
whether neutrons were emitted in the process.
On finding that more neutrons were emitted than produce fission, Rotblat
realized that this could lead to a chain reaction in which the enormous amount of
energy released could cause a violent explosion – and conceivably be used to
make an atomic bomb.
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| Joseph Rotblat - abolishwar.org.uk |
