1 September 2005

We Remember Your Humanity: Sir Professor Joseph Rotblat
Farewell to a Beloved and Great Human Being

Sir Professor Joseph Rotblat, one of the great heroes of the Nuclear Age, Nobel Peace Laureate, and friend and ally of all who worked for a nuclear weapons free world, died peacefully in his sleep in London. We are in grief and sorrow to lose his presence among us, but remain deeply grateful for the magnificence and inspiration of Professor Rotblat’s life.

That generous life touched so many people that tributes and remembrances of all kinds will pour forth over the next days. Those of us who had the honor to meet him or know him remember his great kindness and his incisive intellect, both in the service of his unflagging passion to rid the world of nuclear weapons, and eventually, war itself. We at the Atomic Mirror offer the following few glimpses into the life of a man who, at the dawn of the Nuclear Age, set the example for us all by walking away from nuclear weapons.

Janet remembers that in 1994 the International Peace Bureau (IPB) nominated Sir Joseph for the Nobel Peace Prize. When he didn’t get it that year, IPB decided to nominate him again in 1995, the 50th anniversary year of the Nuclear Age, thinking he might have a better chance. Janet was charged to call him when she returned to England. When she told him on the phone, he said, “That’s very kind, Janet, but you know they’ll never give it to me.” Later in the year, in the midst of the International Court of Justice hearings on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, the world learned that he and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs did indeed receive the prestigious prize.

Pamela remembers hearing him deliver a blistering speech decrying the Bush administration’s preemptive nuclear policy in Geneva in 2003 to the assembled delegates to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Preparatory Meeting. Just two months after the “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq, he reminded the audience that “a rich and powerful nation can be compassionate instead of greedy, generous instead of jealous, can use persuasion rather than force, and equity rather than oppression” and expressed his belief that the American people would not accept a "fundamentally immoral nuclear policy." When a member of the official US delegation agreed with Rotblat, Rotblat replied, "You are now going in the opposite direction." How he managed to express courtesy to the person, fury about the policy, and hope that a force would arise within the US to reject such policies is a lesson to us all.

His outrage at that policy inspired the creation of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness program in Britain, launched a year ago in London by himself and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The formidable intellectual and moral exchange, plus the obvious respect and affection, between the two Nobel Laureates touched everyone there, including a large delegation of young people.

In May of this year, Professor Rotblat sent an Appeal to Delegates to the Seventh Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference at the UN that included his concern for the young people of our world:

How can we persuade the young generation to cast aside the culture of violence, when they know that it is on the threat of extreme violence that we rely for security? We all have a common interest: survival. We have to move forward from a now outdated security system based on nuclear deterrence and alliances, to one based on cooperation and allegiance to humankind.

On the 60th anniversary of the first atomic test, 16 July 2005, the Atomic Mirror carried a message from Professor Rotblat to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to the Inheritors of the Manhattan Project, the current generation of nuclear scientists. He encouraged them to withhold their skills as a way to influence the nuclear weapons countries to cease nuclear weapons development, and concluded his appeal by reminding them:

The basic human value is life itself; the most important of human rights is the right to live. It is the duty of scientists to see to it that, through their work, life will not be put into peril, but will be made safe and its quality enhanced.

When people of the future look back to the beginning of the Nuclear Age and to the Manhattan Project that birthed it, they will see Sir Professor Joseph Rotblat and his deep concern for their safety and the quality of their lives. He often reminded us, in the words of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto (of which he was the last living signer) to “remember our humanity.” Now, as we remember his humanity, we already miss him terribly. We who knew him still feel the warmth of his compassion, and the fierce light of his being shining on us as we go on without him. But we will carry on because we still have work to do to fulfill his dream, and ours, of a world without nuclear weapons and war.

Farewell, Prof. We love you.

Janet Bloomfield and Pamela Meidell

Please send condolences and tributes to pugwash@mac.com

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