PRINCE OF PUGWASH

THIS YEAR'S SURPRISE CHOICE IS A MAN WHOSE FIGHT AGAINST THE BOMB BEGAN BEFORE THE FIRST ONE WAS BUILT

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...

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