Voice of the Atom

There is one little magazine (circa 5,600) whose voice is heard around the world. Its name: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Its subscribers in 55 countries (including 40 in Russia) read like an international Who's Who of statesmen, news commentators and scientists; many readers consider it a better source of information on the U.S. atomic-energy program than AEC's own reports to Congress.

Last week the Bulletin took a look a Russian science. Contrary to popular belief, wrote Editor Eugene Rabinowitch, the quality of science in Russia "is clearly on the upgrade ... It is wrong to think of contemporary Soviet science as being largely paralyzed by ... ignorant politicians." In many branches the Russians are turning out brilliant work. Warned the Bulletin: The U.S. should beware of "smug satisfaction with our own superiority . . . a belief that we can leave Soviet competition far behind simply by tightening secrecy and preventing leaks."

Penetrating Trickle. The Bulletin is quick to print such unpleasant facts or wage a battle for what it considers journalistic or scientific freedom. When the U.S., a year ago, slapped restrictions on the foreign circulation of U.S. technical journals, the Bulletin was in the forefront of the fight that got the order repealed. The Bulletin is well aware that the Russians read it to try to chart U.S. military and political thinking on the bomb. But Editor Rabinowitch thinks that the U.S. also gains by circulating the magazine in Russia. "It may be but a trickle of fresh water penetrating through the wall," said he, "but even the Russians cannot help being influenced or shaken in their Communist beliefs by what they read from the West."

The explosion of the first A-bombs over Japan led to the founding of the Bulletin in 1945. Many scientists, appalled at the destruction, felt that they needed a magazine to help educate the world about the atom bomb. They raised enough money to print 500 copies of a semimonthly newsletter. Rabinowitch, a 51-year-old, Russian-born physical chemist who worked on the Chicago bomb project and now teaches at the University of Illinois, had no trouble finding writers. He has seven Nobel Prizewinners on his editorial board. Scientists like Albert Einstein, Harold C. Urey, Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard write for him for nothing.

Approaching Midnight. The Bulletin still loses about $30,000 a year (half its total cost), but its backers are increasing. Last week the Ford Foundation (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) announced that in 1951 it gave the Bulletin $25,000. The magazine is careful to print no classified material, has held up an article as long as three years for clearance. Despite this leisurely pace, the editors and contributors think that the world is running out of time in which to work out the international problems of the atom bomb. When the Bulletin began, the cover pictured a clock with the hands at eight minutes to midnight. Now the hands have been moved up to three minutes of twelve.

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