Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

Pugwash Conferences On Science and World Affairs

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Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs is an international organization

International organization

An intergovernmental organization is an organization comprised primarily of Sovereignty State , or of other intergovernmental organization. Intergovernmental organizations are often called International_organization, although that term may also include international nongovernmental organization such as international non-profit organizations...
that brings together scholars and public figures to work toward reducing the danger of armed conflict and to seek solutions to global security threats. It was founded in 1957 by Joseph Rotblat

Joseph Rotblat

Sir Joseph Rotblat, Order of St Michael and St George, Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society, was a Poland-born and United Kingdom-naturalised physicist....
and Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, Order of Merit , Fellow of the Royal Society , was a British people philosopher, mathematical logic, mathematician, historian, advocate for social reform, and pacifism....
in Pugwash, Nova Scotia

Pugwash, Nova Scotia

Pugwash is a Canada village in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia.The village is home to fishing, salt mining, and small-scale manufacturing and is situated on the Northumberland Strait at the mouth of the Pugwash River....
, Canada, following the release of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Russell-Einstein Manifesto

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on July 9, 1955 by Bertrand Russell in the midst of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict....
in 1955.

Pugwash and Rotblat jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. According to Nobel's will , the Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for :wikt:fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the h...
in 1995 for efforts on nuclear disarmament

Nuclear disarmament

Nuclear disarmament is the proposed dismantling of nuclear weapons.Proponents of nuclear disarmament say that it would lessen the probability of Nuclear warfare occurring, especially accidentally....
. International Student/Young Pugwash

International Student/Young Pugwash

International Student/Young Pugwash is an international organization that promotes awareness and action among students and young professionals in relation to ethics implications of science and technology science policy, particularly matters of international security and weapons of mass destruction....
groups have existed since 1979.

Russell-Einstein Manifesto, released July 9, 1955, called for a conference for scientists to assess the dangers of weapons of mass destruction

Weapons of mass destruction

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Encyclopedia

The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs is an international organization

International organization

Joseph Rotblat

Bertrand Russell

Pugwash, Nova Scotia

Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Nobel Peace Prize

Nuclear disarmament

International Student/Young Pugwash

Origin of the Pugwash Conferences

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, released July 9, 1955, called for a conference for scientists to assess the dangers of weapons of mass destruction

Weapons of mass destruction

A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill large numbers of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general....
(then only considered to be nuclear weapons). Cyrus Eaton, a Canadian industrialist who had known Russell since 1938, offered on July 13 to finance the conference in his hometown of Pugwash, Nova Scotia

Pugwash, Nova Scotia

Pugwash is a Canada village in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia.The village is home to fishing, salt mining, and small-scale manufacturing and is situated on the Northumberland Strait at the mouth of the Pugwash River....
. This was not taken up at the time because a meeting was planned for India

India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
, at the invitation of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru The son of the wealthy Indian barrister and politician Motilal Nehru, Nehru became a leader of the left-wing of the Indian National Congress at a remarkably young age....
. With the outbreak of the Suez Crisis

Suez Crisis

The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, was a military attack on Egypt by United Kingdom, France, and Israel beginning on 29 October 1956....
the Indian conference was postponed. Aristotle Onassis

Aristotle Onassis

Aristotle Sokratis "Ari"/"Aristo" Onassis was one of the prominent shipping Business magnate of the 20th century. Some sources say he was born in 1900 and later changed his age to 16 so as to avoid deportation from Turkey....
offered to finance a meeting in Monaco

Monaco

Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a small sovereign city-state located in South Western Europe . The territory lies on the northern coast of the Mediterranean Sea....
instead, but this was rejected. Eaton's former invitation was taken up.

The first conference was held in July 1957 in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, hence the organization's name. It was organized by Joseph Rotblat, who served as secretary-general of the organization from its inception until 1973. The Russell-Einstein Manifesto became the Pugwash Conferences' founding charter.

Twenty-two scientists attended the first conference:

seven from the USA (David F. Cavers, Paul Doty, Hermann J. Muller, Eugene Rabinowitch
Eugene Rabinowitch

Eugene Rabinowitch was a Russian-born United States biophysicist who is best known for his work in relation to nuclear weapons, especially as a co-author of the Franck Report and a co-founder in 1945 of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a global security and public policy magazine, which he edited until his death....
, Walter Selove, Leó Szilárd
Leó Szilárd

Le? Szil?rd was a Hungary-United States physicist who conceived the nuclear chain reaction and worked on the Manhattan Project. He was born in Budapest under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and died in La Jolla, California, California....
, Victor F. Weisskopf
Victor Frederick Weisskopf

Victor Frederick Weisskopf was an Austrian American theoretical physicist. He did postdoctoral work with Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schr?dinger, Wolfgang Pauli and Niels Bohr....
)
three from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
(Alexander M. Kuzin, Dmitri V. Skobeltzyn, Alexander V. Topchiev)
three from Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
(Iwao Ogawa, Shinichiro Tomonaga, Hideki Yukawa
Hideki Yukawa

n? , was a Japanese theoretical physicist and the first Japanese Nobel prize....
)
two from the UK
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
(Cecil F. Powell
Cecil Frank Powell

Cecil Frank Powell was a British physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics Nobel laureates for his development of the nuclear emulsion of studying nuclear processes and for the resulting discovery of the pion , a heavy subatomic particle while working at Bristol University....
, Joseph Rotblat
Joseph Rotblat

Sir Joseph Rotblat, Order of St Michael and St George, Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society, was a Poland-born and United Kingdom-naturalised physicist....
)
two from Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
(George Brock Chisholm, John S. Foster)
one each from Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
(Mark L. E. Oliphant
Mark Oliphant

Sir Marcus 'Mark' Laurence Elwin Oliphant Order of Australia, Order of the British Empire was an Australian physicist and Humanitarianism who played a fundamental role in the first experimental demonstration of nuclear fusion and the development of the Nuclear weapon....
), Austria
Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
(Hans Thirring
Hans Thirring

Hans Thirring was an Austrian Theoretical physics, professor, and father of the physicist Walter Thirring.Together with the mathematician Josef Lense, he is known for the prediction of the Lense-Thirring frame dragging effect of general relativity in 1918....
), China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
(Chou Pei-Yuan), France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
(Antoine M. B. Lacassagne) and Poland
Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian Enclave and exclave, to the north....
(Marian Danysz
Marian Danysz

Marian Danysz was a Poland physicist.Son of Jan Kazimierz Danysz. In 1952, he co-discovered with Jerzy Pniewski a new kind of matter, an atomic nucleus, which alongside a proton and neutron contains a third particle: the lambda hyperon....
).

Cyrus Eaton, Eric Burhop, whom Eaton had requested be invited, and Vladimir Pavlichenko also were present. Many others were unable to attend, including co-founder Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Organizational structure

Officers include the president, secretary-general and executive director. Formal governance is provided by the twenty-eight-person Pugwash Council, which serves for five years. There is also a six-member executive committee that assists the secretary-general. Jayantha Dhanapala

Jayantha Dhanapala

Jayantha Dhanapala is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Dr. Dhanapala was Sri Lanka's official candidate for the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations, before withdrawing from the race on 29 September 2006....
is the current president.

The four Pugwash offices, in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
, London

London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
, Geneva

Geneva

Geneva is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie . Situated where the Rh?ne River exits Lake Geneva , it is the capital of the Canton of Geneva....
, and Washington D.C., provide support for Pugwash activities and serve as liaisons to the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, Social change, human rights and achieving world peace....
and other international organizations.

There are more than forty national Pugwash groups, organized as independent entities and often supported or administered by national academies of science.

The International Student/Young Pugwash

International Student/Young Pugwash

International Student/Young Pugwash is an international organization that promotes awareness and action among students and young professionals in relation to ethics implications of science and technology science policy, particularly matters of international security and weapons of mass destruction....
groups works with, but are independent from, the international Pugwash group.

Contributions to international security

Pugwash's first fifteen years coincided with the Berlin Crisis

Berlin Crisis

Berlin Crisis may refer to*the Berlin Blockade of 1948-1949*the Berlin Crisis of 1961*the Australian alternative band, see Berlin Crisis ...
, the Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

File:EXCOMM meeting, , 29 October 1962.jpgFile:Jupiter IRBM.jpgThe Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba that occurred in the early 1960s during the Cold War....
, the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

On the night of August 20 - August 21, 1968, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic , Hungary and Poland invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to halt Alexander Dubcek's Prague Spring political liberalization reforms....
, and the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina Wars, the Vietnam Conflict, or often in Vietnam the American War occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from 1959 to April 30, 1975....
. Pugwash played a useful role in opening communication channels during a time of otherwise-strained official and unofficial relations. It provided background work to the Partial Test Ban Treaty

Partial Test Ban Treaty

The Treaty banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water, often abbreviated as the Partial Test Ban Treaty , Limited Test Ban Treaty , or Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is a treaty prohibiting all nuclear testing of nuclear weapons Underground nuclear testing....
(1963), the Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968), the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was a treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile systems used in defending areas against missile-delivered nuclear weapons....
(1972), the Biological Weapons Convention

Biological Weapons Convention

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction was the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of an entire category of weapons ....
(1972), and the Chemical Weapons Convention

Chemical Weapons Convention

The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical warfares. Its full name is the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction....
(1993). Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a Russian politician. He was the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until 1991, and also the last head of state of the USSR, serving from 1988 until its collapse in 1991....
admitted the influence of the organisation on him when he was leader of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
.

As international relations thawed and, as more unofficial communication channels appeared, Pugwash's visibility decreased, but still remained important in arms-control issues of the day: European nuclear forces

European Nuclear Disarmament

European Nuclear Disarmament was a 1980s peace movement group in Britain, led by E. P. Thompson, Mary Kaldor and others, which founded a Europe-wide movement for a "nuclear-free Europe from Poland to Portugal? that put on annual European Nuclear Disarmament conventions from 1982 to 1991....
, chemical and biological weaponry, space weapon

Space weapon

Space weapons are weapons used in space warfare. They include weapons that can attack space systems in orbit , attack targets on the earth from space or disable missiles travelling through space....
s, conventional force reductions and restructuring, and crisis control in the Third World. Pugwash's focus also has expanded to include issues of development

International development

International development is a concept that lacks a universally accepted definition, but it is most used in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context of human development - the development of livelihoods and greater quality of life for humans....
and the environment.

Nobel Peace Prize

In 1995, fifty years after the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima

Hiroshima

The Japanese city of is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chugoku region of western Honshu, the largest of Japan's islands....
, and forty years after the signing of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, the Pugwash Conferences and Joseph Rotblat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize

"for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms".

The Norwegian Nobel committee hoped that awarding the prize to Rotblat and Pugwash would

"encourage world leaders to intensify their efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons".

In his acceptance speech, Rotblat quoted a key phrase from the Manifesto:

"Remember your humanity".

"Pugwashites"

There are more than 3500 "Pugwashites" world-wide, individuals who have attended a Pugwash meeting and thus, are considered associated with Pugwash. Some of these include:

Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

Origin of the Pugwash Conferences

Organizational structure

Contributions to international security

Nobel Peace Prize

"Pugwashites"

See also

External links