Józef Rotblat

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Józef Rotblat's ID badge photo from Los Alamos.

Józef Rotblat (November 4, 1908 – August 31, 2005) was a Polish-Jewish physicist. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 in conjunction with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an organization of scientists which he headed at the time, for their efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

Rotblat was born Józef Rotblat in Łódź in central Poland to a Jewish family. He graduated from the Warsaw University and until 1939 he worked at the university, the Radium Institute in Warsaw and other scientific institutions.

While on a trip to Liverpool on a scientific grant, he was so upset by the fighting in World War II that he determined to do something about it. He remained in Britain and collaborated with James Chadwick, and became involved in the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs. However, after Nazi Germany was defeated, Rotblat became the only physicist to leave the Project, feeling that its initial purpose (to beat Nazi Germany in producing the first bomb) was no longer justifiable.

He became one of the most prominent critics of the nuclear arms race, signing the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955, and with Bertrand Russell he founded the Pugwash Conference in 1957. Despite the Iron Curtain and the Cold War, he advocated establishing links between scientists from the West and East. Just as the Hippocratic Oath provides a code of conduct for physicians, he thought that scientists should have their own code of moral conduct. He repeatedly nominated Mordechai Vanunu, who had disclosed the extent of Israel's nuclear weapons program, for the Nobel Peace Prize.

He was knighted in 1998.

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