Background

Joseph Rotblat was born on November 4, 1904, in Warsaw (then a part of Russia) to an Orthodox Jewish family. During World War I, he and his family, fearing for their lives, lived in a basement and subsisted on potatoes as a mainstay of their diet. His family spiraled from affluence to extreme poverty.

Education

By 1916, when Rotblat was twelve, there was no money, so his family urged him to do practical studies that would quickly provide him with income and a career. He studied electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and basic arithmetic. At fourteen, he became an apprentice to an electrician, a job he detested. However, he was grateful he could help support his parents. He attended the Free University of Poland and became a Master of Arts there in 1932.

As a Jewish, he could not be officially admitted to Warsaw University, but he earned his Doctor of Physics degree there unofficially in 1938. At age thirty, he studied in Liverpool with James Chadwick, a Nobel Prize recipient in Physics. Chadwick proved the existence of neutrons. In 1950 he became the Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool and Doctor of Science at the University of London in 1953.

Career

In 1939, Joseph Rotblat started working at the University of Liverpool on the feasibility of the atom bomb with James Chadwick, whom he followed to Los Alamos to take part in the Manhattan Project. In November 1944, when it was confirmed that Nazi Germany would never manage to build the bomb, Rotblat immediately returned to England, the only scientist to quit the Manhattan Project before its devastating conclusion.

In 1946, he co-founded the Atomic Scientists Association, and, in 1947, he organized "Atom Train," the first big exhibition on peaceful uses and against military applications of nuclear energy.

From 1945 to 1949 he was Director of Research in Nuclear Physics at the University of Liverpool. During those years, his work on photosensitive emulsions contributed to the discovery of the pi meson. He then turned increasingly towards the biological and medical applications of nuclear physics and from 1950 to 1976 he was Professor of Physics at the University of London, at St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, and the hospital's Chief Physicist.

In 1955, Rotblat was one of the eleven signatories of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto launched by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, asking scientists of every country to meet to devise ways of avoiding nuclear war. The manifesto invited scientists around the world to ward off the danger of nuclear weapons ever being used again. The signatories also made an urgent appeal to all governments to understand that humanity had entered a new era in which conflicts would have to be settled by peaceful means. "For there can be no winners in a nuclear war," Russell and Einstein warned.

In 1957, Rotblat founded the Pugwash Conference, taking the name of the Canadian village where the first meeting was held. The conference serves as a forum for researchers devoted to abolishing nuclear weapons and finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts. Joseph Rotblat became the first Secretary General of the organization. Under his indefatigable leadership over 40 years, Pugwash has led the fight against nuclear weapons and been one of the foremost advocates of detente and disarmament.

Rotblat's activities extend far beyond Pugwash. He has dedicated his seemingly limitless energies to rouse the scientific community as well as the public to the perils of nuclear war.

In 1958, he co-founded the United Kingdom Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was the initiator and member of the preparatory committee and governing board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. He was a member of the Initiative Group that organized the Moscow Forum of Scientists. He was an expert adviser for the 1986 Year of Peace for the United Nations. He helped establish a chair of peace studies at Bradford University. He was a participant in the United Kingdom and the U.S.S.R. Medical Exchange Program. He was co-founder and executive vice president of the Atomic Scientists Association of Great Britain. He is largely responsible for the comprehensive reports of 1984 and 1987 of the World Health Organization on the effects of nuclear war on health and health services.

Rotblat has steadfastly challenged the various doctrines of nuclear deterrence. For all in earshot, he has articulated his conviction that lasting world security can be achieved only by the elimination of nuclear weapons and eventually by general and complete disarmament.

He is the author of more than 300 publications - including 20 books - on nuclear and medical physics, radiation biology, control of nuclear weapons, disarmament, the Pugwash movement, and the social responsibility of scientists. In 1995, fifty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Achievements

• Joseph Rotblat played a pivotal role in the struggle to eliminate nuclear weapons.
  
  Rotblat recognized that nuclear weapons would remain in the world, but he still chose to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds. He advocated for collective discussion on nuclear weapons control and the prevention of war through Pugwash, which still facilitates dialogue across borders as they did during the Cold War. He inspired future generations to take a stand through organizations like Student Pugwash. His vision of a world without nuclear weapons and war is everlasting and embraced by many today.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Quest for Global Peace

    (This series of dialogues between two leading ethical thin...)

    2006
  • War No More: Eliminating Conflict in the Nuclear Age

    (Written by Nobel Peace prizewinner and former nuclear phy...)

    2003
  • Striving for Peace, Security and Development in the World

    (The momentous events of the past year have changed the po...)

    1991
  • World Citizenship : Allegiance to Humanity

    (This book discusses the various ways in which the securit...)

    1997
  • The Arms Race at a Time of Decision: Annals of Pugwash, 1983 1983

Religion

Joseph Rotblat was raised in a religious family but during his life, he doubted the existence of God and later became an Agnostic. His father dreamed he would become a rabbi, but deeming religion as pointless, he became a "skeptic quite early on in his youth," desiring to learn more about science.

Views

Joseph Rotblat was a founder and leading inspiration of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs over many decades. The only Manhattan Project scientist to resign on moral grounds, Rotblat became an ardent voice for an end to nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. He said the elimination of nuclear weapons was his short-term goal, and his long-term goal was the elimination of war. He emphasized the social responsibility of scientists and urged young scientists to spend at least 10% of their time thinking about issues other than their chosen field.

Quotations: "I did not imagine that the second half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity created by science."

"I appeal to my fellow scientists to remember their responsibility to humanity."

"From my earliest days I had a passion for science."

"But the nuclear powers still cling tenaciously to their weapons."

"But the first the general public learned about the discovery was the news of the destruction of Hiroshima by the atom bomb. A splendid achievement of science and technology had turned malign. Science became identified with death and destruction."

"But scientists on both sides of the iron curtain played a very significant role in maintaining the momentum of the nuclear arms race throughout the four decades of the Cold War."

"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."

"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."

"All nuclear weapon states should now recognize that this is so, and declare - in Treaty form - that they will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. This would open the way to the gradual, mutual reduction of nuclear arsenals, down to zero."

"I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act."

Membership

Joseph Rotblat was a Fellow of the Royal Society, Institute Physics (honorary). He also was a member of different societies, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Sciences (foreign honorary), Royal Society of Edinburgh, Education Physics in Medicine and Biology, Hospital Physicists' Association (president), British Institute of Radiology (president), International Youth Science Forum (president), Polish Academy of Sciences, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (foreign), Academy of Medical Sciences.

• 

  Royal Society , United Kingdom

• 

  American Association for the Advancement of Science , United States

• 

  American Academy of Sciences , United States

• 

  Royal Society of Edinburgh , United Kingdom

• 

  British Institute of Radiology , United Kingdom

• 

  Polish Academy of Sciences , Poland

• Hospital Physicists' Association

Personality

Joseph Rotblat donated his Nobel Peace Prize to Thinkers Lodge where it is displayed across from the Lenin Peace Prize awarded to Cyrus Eaton.

Quotes from others about the person

• "He saw his family become destitute, he was bullied in food queues, felt the crimp of artillery fire in his eardrums and gut, and witnessed deaths through violence or illness. To the end of his life, Józef refused to ever eat potatoes again because he could not forget the bitter taste of the frost-damaged tubers that were a staple of his wartime diet." - Andrew Brown on Joseph Rotblat in his book Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of Joseph Rotblat.
  
  "Professor Rotblat was brilliant. I am not just referring to the cleverness of a young boy who, after having experienced hunger and disease and squalor during World War I, learned a trade and set up his own business [as an electrician] at the age of 15 without formal schooling and during a time of religious persecution." - Sandra Ionno Butcher in ​"An Open Letter to My Son on the Death of Joseph Rotblat"
  
  "...he was one of those rare individuals who, like Rosa Parks or Nelson Mandela, comes to an intersection with history and courageously forges a new path." - Dr. David Krieger upon the death of Joseph Rotblat

Interests

• Travel, music

Connections

In 1930 Joseph Rotblat met his future wife Tola Gryn.

In 1939 Rotblat returned to Poland from Liverpool to bring back his wife. Recovering from appendicitis surgery, she was unable to leave with him. Rotblat escaped Poland two days before Hitler’s Nazis invaded his country. For years, he tried to locate her, desperately hoping to be reunited with her. Breaking his heart, Tola Gryn, his beloved wife, was gassed at Belzec Crematoria, one of over six million Jewish murdered.

Father:

Zygmunt Rotblat

Spouse:

Tola Gryn

colleague:

James Chadwick

Friend:

Stanislaw Ulam

colleague:

Egon Bretscher

Friend:

Cyrus Eaton

colleague:

Julius Oppenheimer

colleague:

Bertrand Russell

colleague:

Albert Einstein

References

• Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of Joseph Rotblat
  2012
• Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace
  2007
• Joseph Rotblat: A Man of Conscience in the Nuclear Age
  2009