Sir Joseph Rotblat: A Legacy of Peace (1908 – 2005)
an article by David Krieger
President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Joseph Rotblat was one of the great men of the 20th century. He was a man of science and peace. Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1908, he was one of those rare individuals who, like Rosa Parks or Nelson Mandela, comes to an intersection with history and courageously forges a new path. In Joseph’s case, the intersection with history arrived in 1944 while he was working on the Manhattan Project, the US project to develop an atomic bomb.

Joseph had worked as a scientist toward the creation of an atomic weapon, first in the UK at the University of Liverpool and then at Los Alamos, New Mexico. When he learned in late 1944 that Germany would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, he believed there was no longer reason to continue work on creating a US bomb. For him, there was only one reason to create an atomic weapon, and that was to deter the German use of such a weapon during World War II. If the Germans would not have an atomic weapon, then there was no reason for the Allies to have one. Joseph was the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds.

He was the last living signer of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, one of the great documents of the 20th century, and he often quoted its final passage: "We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open for a new paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death."

He was convinced that countries needed to abolish nuclear weapons and he devoted his life to achieving this goal, as well as the goal of ending war as a human institution. Just prior to his 90th birthday, he said that he still had two great goals in life. "My short-term goal," he said, "is the abolition of nuclear weapons, and my long-term goal is the abolition of war."

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