Taking a Stand: Exploring the Role of the Scientists prior to the First Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, 1957 (2013)
Nickerson, Sylvia (Author)
Scientia Canadensis: Journal of the History of Canadian Science, Technology, and Medicine
Volume: 36
Issue: 2
Pages: 63-87
In 1957, a small group of world-renown scientists gathered in Pugwash, Nova Scotia to discuss the growing threat of nuclear arms. Funded by industrialist Cyrus Eaton and spearheaded by philosopher Bertrand Russell and physicist Joseph Rotblat, this 1957 meeting founded an organization of scientists that believed they had a duty to speak out against escalating nuclear testing and what they saw as the irresponsible use of science. However, not every scientist felt that it was appropriate to take a public and political stand. This paper gives a brief history of the Pugwash movement and how its first meeting came to be held in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. The perspectives of involved scientists are examined, contrasting the attitudes of participants in the conference with the attitudes of scientists who declined a public role. This paper explores how scientists perceived their own responsibility to act, examining the willingness to use their cultural identity as scientists to lobby for a particular political position.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Leeming, Mark;
(2013)
The Creation of Radicalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism in Nova Scotia, c. 1972--1979
Book
Brown, Andrew;
(2012)
Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of Joseph Rotblat
Book
Andrew S. Tompkins;
(2016)
Better Active than Radioactive!: Anti-Nuclear Protest in 1970s France and West Germany
Book
Joanne Barker;
(2021)
Red Scare: The State's Indigenous Terrorist
Book
Alison Kraft;
(2022)
From Dissent to Diplomacy: The Pugwash Project During the 1960s Cold War
Article
Waqar H. Zaidi;
(2023)
The Pugwash scientists’ conferences, Cyrus Eaton and the clash of internationalisms, 1954–1961
Article
Maika Nakao;
Takeshi Kurihara;
Masakatsu Yamazaki;
(2015)
Yasushi Nishiwaki, Radiation Biophysics, and Peril and Hope in the Nuclear Age
Article
Grattan-Guinness, Ivor;
(2009)
Bertrand Russell (1872--1970), Man of Dissent
Book
Hay, Amy M.;
(2021)
The Defoliation of America: Agent Orange Chemicals, Citizens, and Protests
Article
Barbara Keys;
(2018)
The Telephone and Its Uses in 1980s U.S. Activism
Book
John Francis;
(2009)
Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking. 17 Years of Silence.
Article
Jonathan Toms;
(2020)
MIND, Anti-Psychiatry, and the Case of the Mental Hygiene Movement’s ‘Discursive Transformation’
Article
Tamar W. Carroll;
(2021)
Social Protest Photography and Public History: “Whose Streets? Our Streets!”: New York City, 1980–2000
Book
J. I. Little;
(2019)
At the Wilderness Edge: The Rise of the Antidevelopment Movement on Canada's West Coast
Book
Marcelo Hoffman;
(2024)
Foucault in Brazil: Dictatorship, Resistance, and Solidarity
Book
Sarah E. Robey;
(2022)
Atomic Americans: Citizens in a Nuclear State
Article
M. X. Mitchell;
(2021)
The Cosmology of Evidence: Suffering, Science, and Biological Witness After Three Mile Island
Article
Eugene Cittadino;
(2018)
Barry Commoner and Paul Sears on Project Chariot: Epiphany, Ecology, and the Atomic Energy Commission
Book
Rodney P. Carlisle;
Joan M. Zenzen;
(1996)
Supplying the Nuclear Arsenal: American Production-reactors, 1942-1992
Book
Schmid, Sonja D.;
(2015)
Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry
Canadian Historical Review
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Journal of the History of Biology
Be the first to comment!