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In 1968 Garcia Robles co-authored the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that has now been signed by 115 nations. Since 1962, he has represented Mexico at the U.N.'s Disarmament Committee in Geneva, where he and Alva Myrdal became firm friends. Currently he is the chairman of the committee. The author of more than 20 books and some 300 articles on foreign affairs, Garcia Robles is said by acquaintances to be "obsessed" with the disarmament issue. The Nobel Committee's choice, says he, clearly demonstrates the world's growing concern for disarmament "in spite of our very modest achievements."
Modest indeed. As Alva Myrdal pointed out in The Game of Disarmament, the world had a total of 500 intercontinental ballistic missile launchers in 1962. Today there are close to 5,000.
*The other Nobel couples: Pierre and Marie Curie of France, who shared part of the physics prize in 1903, and Americans Carl and Gerty Cori, who shared the 1947 medicine prize.