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| Fig. 1: Joseph Rotblat. (Courtesy of the DOE. Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
Joseph Rotblat, a Polish citizen from Warsaw, was born on November 4, 1908. [1] He was born to Jewish parents in Russian controlled Poland. He had six siblings, but two of them died when they were infants. Because his parents could not afford to send him to a gymnasium, he was educated by a local rabbi. He was then accepted into a technical school and studied electrical engineering. [2] While after graduation he worked as an electrician, he had aspirations to be a physicist, and enrolled in the Free University of Poland. After completing his masters there, he obtained his Phd at the University of Warsaw. Rotblat can be seen in Fig. 1.
After receiving his doctorate, Rotblat was a Research Fellow at the Radiological Laboratory of the Scientific Society of Warsaw. He eventually became the assistant director of Atomic Physics at the Free University of Poland. [2] Before the outbreak of World War Two, he proved that in the fission process, neutrons were emitted. Moreover, he realized that if this happened in a short time, a considerable amounts of energy could be released and this process could happen in less than a microsecond, which could potentially produce an atomic bomb. This led James Chadwick, who won the nobel prize, to give Rotblat a fellowship at the University of Liverpool. Rotblats motivation to work with Chadwick in was to conduct experiments on the cyclotron that was just becoming operational when he arrived. This cyclotron accelerated particles such as protons and deuterons, to an energy of up to 4.1 MeV, which could lead to nuclear reactions if these particles collided. [2] His wife was not able to leave Poland with him, and was killed in the Holocaust. [1] Rotblat remained single for the rest of his life. [3]
When Rotblat realized that the nuclear fission could produce a bomb, he continued to research it as he thought it was the only way to stop Nazi Germany. He continued to work with Chadwick on the British atomic bomb project, which was called Tube Alloys. [2] He joined the Los Alamos Laboratory as part of the British Mission to the Manhattan Project. In 1944, however, when it was confirmed that Nazi Germany would never manage to build a bomb, he returned to England. He was the only scientist to quit the Manhattan Project before its conclusion. [1]
Rotblat was a strongly opposed to the use of nuclear weapons. He co-founded the Atomic Scientists Association in 1946 and organized an exhibition in 1947 showcasing the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. [2] He became the Director of Research in Nuclear Physics at the University of Liverpool and focused on the biological and medical applications of nuclear physics. He went on to become a Professor of Physics at the University of London, at St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and was the hospital's chief Physicist. [1]
In 1955 he signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which asked scientists of every country to think of ways to avoid a nuclear war. He then founded the Pugwash Conference, which was a place for researchers committed to abolishing nuclear weapons to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts. [3] He also dedicated much energy to letting the public know about the dangers of a nuclear war. His conviction was the lasting world security could only be achieved through the elimination of nuclear weapons. [3]
He is the author of more than 300 publications on nuclear and medical physics and the social responsibility of scientists. Because of the Pugwash conference, he was given the Nobel Prize for Peace. [3]
© Eddie Mattout. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] M. Underwood, Joseph Rotblat: A Man of Conscience In The Nuclear Age (Sussex Academic Press, 2009).
[2] R. Braun et al., eds, Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace (Wiley-VCH, 2007).
[3] A. Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of Joseph Rotblat (Oxford University Press, 2012).
