PRINCE OF PUGWASH

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

BAILING OUT OF THE WAR EFFORT was not a popular move in 1944; neither was opposing nukes at the height of the cold war in the 1950s and '60s. Popularity evidently wasn't high on Joseph Rotblat's list, though. The Polish-born British physicist was helping the U.S. develop the first A-bomb when he concluded that Nazi Germany was never going to build its own. So he quit his job with the Manhattan Project--the only physicist to do so--believing that only the threat of losing World War II could justify creating so terrible a weapon. Then, in 1955, Rotblat joined Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and six other scientists in signing a manifesto that led to the founding of the annual Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which have lobbied ever since to convince governments that, in Rotblat's own words, "the genie can be put back in the bottle."

Too often such courageous behavior is not rewarded. Last week, however, it was--handsomely if somewhat belatedly. The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave its 1995 Peace Prize jointly to Rotblat, 86, and the Pugwash Conferences he still presides over. The conferences--named for the small Nova Scotia fishing village where they began--were praised by the committee for recognizing "the responsibility of scientists for their inventions" and for bringing together "scientists and decision makers to collaborate across political divides on constructive proposals for reducing the nuclear threat." It was the third Peace Prize to be given to scientists for nuclear-disarmament work, after Linus Pauling's 1962 award and the 1985 prize to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War organization.

The selection of Rotblat and Pugwash, while something of a surprise, comes at a particularly opportune time. It is 50 years since atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 200,000 people. And the French and Chinese governments continue to defy international protests by conducting nuclear tests. "One of the reasons for the prize is a sort of protest against testing of nuclear weapons, and nuclear arms in general," acknowledged committee chairman Francis Sejersted.

The reaction to such a pointedly political award was predictable. Greenpeace, which has been trying to stop the French tests by sailing small boats into the target zone, hailed it as a "fantastic decision." The French government, on the other hand, congratulated the winners and applauded the idea of disarmament--but insisted that its tests would continue to ensure a worldwide "security climate." Rotblat, reached by the Nobel committee at his home in the London suburb of Cricklewood, was beaming. "When I woke up this morning," the professor emeritus at the University of London told reporters, "I didn't expect to become such a celebrity."

The trim, sprightly Rotblat has been a celebrity among antinuclear activists for nearly half a century. He first started wrestling with the moral implications of atomic weaponry as a young refugee from Nazi-occupied Poland, working at the University of Liverpool in the early 1940s. "For me," he wrote in an article for the Hiroshima anniversary this past summer, "the decision to become involved in developing the Bomb was painful, and for almost a year I struggled with my conscience. Eventually I concluded, as did most of the other scientists, that we needed to make the Bomb so that it should not be used. The threat of our Bomb would stop the Germans from using their Bomb."

But when he moved to the U.S. in 1944 to join the American A-bomb effort, his doubts deepened almost at once. When he heard U.S. General Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project's supervisor, say that the real reason for continuing was to keep the Russians in line after the war, Rotblat was "deeply shocked." When he quit, "I was accused of being a spy, and left only after agreeing not to talk to anybody about my reason for leaving."

Rotblat went back to England, and it was over the BBC that he heard the news of the bombing of Hiroshima. "I felt angry, worried and fearful about the future of our civilization," he recalled at a news conference last week. Rotblat refocused his scientific attention on possible medical uses of nuclear reactions and radiation; he also began his lifelong commitment to nuclear disarmament. The Pugwash organization was considered especially influential during the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan began pushing his Star Wars program; it gave scientists an unofficial channel through which to discuss the tricky arms-reduction issues raised by Reagan's plan.

A bachelor who lives with his sister-in-law, Rotblat maintains a schedule that begins at his rather cluttered office at about 6 a.m. every day. Important as the Pugwash organization is to him, it is only a part of his arms-reduction work. He is also on the governing board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Despite having won the ultimate recognition of the Nobel, he is hardly ready to quit. Says Rotblat: "I see this honor not for me personally, but rather for the small group of scientists who have been working for 40 years to try to save the world, often against the world's wish."