Nobel Prize-winner re-visits Merseyside

Former colleagues and students gave Professor Joseph Rotblat a warm welcome when the Nobel Prize-winner for 1995 delivered a lecture entitled 'Science and Humanity in the Nuclear Age' as the University's Faculty of Science lecture for 1996-97 on Thursday, 17 April.

Joseph Rotblat came to The University of Liverpool from Poland in 1939 to work as a Research Fellow with Professor (later Sir) James Chadwick. By that time he had envisaged the concept of the atomic bomb, which he worked on with Professor Chadwick, using the cyclotron in the basement of the George Holt Building. Subsequently, in 1943, he went on to Los Alamos to work on the Manhattan Project until the end of 1944.

Throughout the early post-war years, however, he became increasingly preoccupied with the impact of nuclear weaponry on mankind and in 1957, having signed the 1955 Manifesto initiated by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, he became deeply involved in the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World affairs which campaigned for the elimination of nuclear arms. He was for seventeen years Secretary General of the Pugwash Conferences and is now President.

The following day Professor Rotblat was the guest speaker at the Convocation Annual Dinner in Staff House. Those attending the Dinner were treated to a highly amusing yet thought-provoking speech by Professor Rotblat, whose deep affection for Liverpool was clearly evident.