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Sunday 24 January 2010

Joseph Rotblat on Charlie Rose, 1996

To see an interview with Joseph Rotblat on the Charlie Rose show in 1996, please click here.

"A discussion with Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project before the A-bomb was tested. He talks about his signing of the historic Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which called for the end to all nuclear weapons and was the beginning of Rotblat's fifty year fight for total nuclear disarmament."

Thursday 21 January 2010

Russell at the 1962 Pugwash Conference - Video

Just came across this wonderful short video from the London 1962 Pugwash Conference...

Here's what Russell said about this conference in his autobiography:

The Pugwash movement now seems to be firmly established and part of the respectable progress of scientific relations with international affairs. I myself have had little to do directly with its progress in the last years. My interest turned to new plans towards persuading peoples and Governments to banish war and in particular weapons of mass extermination, first of all nuclear weapons. In the course of these fresh endeavours, I felt that I had become rather disreputable in the eyes of the more conservative scientists. The Pugwash movement held a great meeting of scientists from all over the world in London in September 1962. I was to speak about the founding of the movement and I warned my friends that I might be hissed--as I was fully convinced that I should be. I was deeply touched by being given a standing ovation when I rose to speak which included, I was told, all the participants, all, that is, save Lord Hailsham. He was present in his capacity as the Queen's Minister of Science. He was personally, I think, friendly enough to me, but, weighed down by office, he sat tight. That was the last occasion on which I have taken public part in a Pugwash conference.(1)

(1) The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. Vol III, 1944-1969, Simon, 1969, p. 111.