Profile: Joseph Rotblat; January 1996; Scientific American Magazine; by Landau; 2 Page(s)

The building of the atomic bomb is the tale of the century. From that experience have come many stories of scientists ensnared in the web of national politics or entranced by the search for the fundamentals of the universe. There was one physicist, however, who marched to a different drummer, who left the Manhattan Project when it was discovered the Germans were not building a bomb.

The one who paused was Joseph Rotblat, the physicist Freeman Dyson once wrote, "who, to his everlasting credit, resigned his position at Los Alamos." Joseph Rotblat left Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in 1944, while there was still time to write a different history for this century. A nuclear physicist, Rotblat transformed his career to medical physics and passionately pursued disarmament. Last year Rotblat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons from the planet.