Skip to main content

Joseph Rotblat: Moral Dilemmas and the Manhattan Project

Abstract

John Fitzgerald Kennedy famously said, “One man can make a difference and every man should try.”1 Joseph Rotblat (1908–2005) was the quintessence of Kennedy’s conviction. He was the only scientist who left Los Alamos after it transpired that the atomic bomb being developed there was intended for use against adversaries other than Nazi Germany. I explore Rotblat’s early research in Warsaw and Liverpool, which established his reputation as a highly capable experimental physicist, and which led him to join the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in 1944. I examine his motivation for resigning from the project in 1945, and the unwillingness of his fellow scientists to follow suit, which draws attention to the continuing discourse on the responsibility of scientists for the consequences of their research.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Notes

  1. The two successive nuclear reactions are 13Al27 + 2He4 → 15P30 + 0n1 and 15P30 →  14Si30 + 1e+.

  2. The two nuclear reactions are 88Ra226 → 86Rn222 + 2He4 and 5Be11 + 2He4 → 7N14 + 0n1.

  3. Cobalt-60 was the major source of gamma radiation used in radiotherapy for many years.

  4. The currently accepted number is around three neutrons on average.

  5. The nucleus of U-235 (92U235) consists of 92 protons, an even number, and of 143 neutrons, an odd number.

  6. This was later shown to be an underestimate; instead it needed to be somewhere in the region of a few kilograms.

  7. Rotblat objected that all letters sent from Los Alamos were censored.

  8. Rotblat was the last living signatory of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.

References

  1. Quoted in Götz Neuneck, “Joseph Rotblat: The Elimination of Nuclear Weapons and the Social Conscience of Scientists: ‘Above all – remember your humanity’,” in Reiner Braun, Robert Hinde, David Krieger, Harold Kroto, and Sally Milne, ed., Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace (Weinheim: Wiley-VCH Verlag, 2007), pp. 215–224, on p. 218.

  2. Joseph Rotblat, “My early years as a physicist in Poland,” in Peter Rowlands and Vincent Attwood, ed., War and Peace: The Life and Work of Sir Joseph Rotblat (University of Liverpool, 2006), pp. 39–55, on p. 54.

  3. Quoted in John Finney, “Joseph Rotblat: The Nuclear Physicist,” in Braun, Hinde, Krieger, Kroto, and Milne, Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace (ref. 1), pp. 15–29, on p. 17.

  4. Roger H. Stuewer, “The Discovery of Artificial Radioactivity,” in Monique Bordry and Pierre Radvanyi, ed., Oeuvre et engagement de Frédéric Joliot-Curie (Les Ulis: EDP Sciences, 2001), pp. 11–20.

  5. Francesco Guerra, Matteo Leone, and Nadia Robotti, “Enrico Fermi’s Discovery of Neutron-Induced Artificial Radioactivity: Neutrons and Neutron Sources,” Physics in Perspecctive 8 (2006), 255–281.

  6. Finney, “Joseph Rotblat” (ref. 3), p. 17.

  7. Ibid.; Joseph Rotblat, Audio Interview by Katherine Thompson (British Library Sound Archive, 1999), tape 3.

  8. Roger H. Stuewer, “The Origin of the Liquid-Drop Model and the Interpretation of Nuclear Fission,” Perspectives on Science 2 (1994), 39–92, especially 78–87, 107–116; Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1996), Chapter 10, pp. 231–258.

  9. Lise Meitner and O.R. Frisch, “Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: a New Type of Nuclear Reaction,” Nature 143 (February 11, 1939), 239–240.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Andrew Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of Joseph Rotblat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 16.

  11. H. von Halban, F. Joliot, and L. Kowarski, “Number of Neutrons Liberated in the Nuclear Fission of Uranium,” Nature 143 (April 22, 1939), 680.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Rotblat, Audio Interview (ref. 7), tape 4.

  13. Joseph Roblat, “Leaving the bomb project,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 41, No. 7 (August 1985), 16–19, on 17.

  14. Rotblat, Audio Interview (ref. 7), tape 5.

  15. J. Rotblat, “Application of the Coincidence Method to Testing the Lifetime and Level Scheme of Radium C′,” Nature 144 (August 5, 1939), 248–249.

  16. Siegfried Flügge, “Kann der Energieinhalt der Atomkerne technisch nutzbar gemacht werden?” Die Naturwissenschaften 27 (1939), 402–410.

  17. Rotblat, “My early years” (ref. 2), p. 54.

  18. Joseph Rotblat, Video Interview by Edward Goldwyn and Harry Kroto (Vega Science Trust Interviews, 2002), video 3.

  19. Joseph Rotblat, “The Effects of Fascism in Science,” The Papers of Joseph Rotblat, Churchill Archives Centre, RTBT, G.18.

  20. Andrew Brown, The Neutron and the Bomb: A biography of Sir James Chadwick (Oxford, New York, Tokyo: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 179.

  21. N. Bohr, “Resonance in Uranium and Thorium Disintegrations and the Phenomenon of Nuclear Fission,” The Physical Review 55 (1939), 418–419.

  22. Rotblat, “Leaving the bomb project” (ref. 13), p. 17.

  23. John Riley Holt, “Sir Joseph Rotblat in Liverpool,” in Rowlands and Attwood, War and Peace (ref. 2), pp. 61–74, on pp. 62–63.

  24. Joseph Rotblat, “Report on Investigations of Neutrons from Spontaneous Fission, Papers of Joseph Rotblat (ref. 19), RTBT, D.20; idem, “The Energy Spectrum of the Fission Neutrons Produced in Uranium by Thermal Neutrons,” ibid., RTBT, D.11.

  25. O.R. Frisch and R. Peierls, “On the Construction of a ‘Super-bonb’; based on a Nuclear Chain Reaction in Uranium” [Frisch-Peierls Memorandum, March 1940 (Part 2)], reproduced in Ferenc Morton Szasz, British Scientists and the Manhattan Project: The Los Alamos Years (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), pp. 144–147, on pp. 145–146; see also website <www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Begin/FrischPeierls2.shtml>, pp. 1–2 of 3.

  26. Quoted in Margaret Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy 19391945 (London and Toronto: Macmillan and New YorK: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), p. 77. See also “Report by MAUD Committee on the Use of Uranium for a Bomb,” website <www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Begin/MAUD.shtml>, p. 1 of 3.

  27. Brown, Neutron and the Bomb (ref. 20), p. 211.

  28. Finney, “Joseph Rotblat” (ref. 3), p. 21; Edwin McMillan and Philip Hauge Abelson, “Radioactive Element 93,” Phys. Rev. 57 (1940), 1185–1186.

  29. Brown, Neutron and the Bomb (ref. 20), p. 206.

  30. Szasz, British Scientists (ref. 25), p. 5.

  31. Ibid, p. xvi.

  32. Quoted in Joseph Rotblat, “Remember Your Humanity” [Nobel Lecture, December 10, 1995], website <www.Pugwash.org/award/Rotblatnobel.htm>, p. 1 of 3.

  33. Quoted in Brown, Neutron and the Bomb (ref. 20), p. 218.

  34. Szasz, British Scientists (ref. 25), p. 6.

  35. Rotblat, Video Interview (ref. 18), video 4.

  36. Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience (ref. 10), p. 44.

  37. Robert S. Norris, “General Leslie R. Groves and the Scientists,” in Cynthia C. Kelly, Remembering the Manhattan Project: Perspectives on the Making of the Atomic Bomb and its Legacy (New Jersey, London, Singapore: World Scientific, 2004), pp. 63–68, on p. 65.

  38. Brown, Neutron and the Bomb (ref. 20), p. 205.

  39. Otto R. Frisch, What little I remember (Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 142.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Szasz, British Scientists (ref. 25), p. 16.

  41. Quoted in ibid.

  42. Rotblat, Audio Interview (ref. 7), tape 9.

  43. Joseph Rotblat, Papers of Joseph Rotblat (ref. 19), RTBT, D. 53C.

  44. Rotblat, Video Interview (ref. 18), video 5.

  45. Richard Rhodes, “The Atomic Bomb in the Second World War,” in Kelly, Remembering the Manhattan Project (ref. 37), pp. 17–29, on p. 21.

  46. Freeman Dyson, “Foreword,” in Maxwell Bruce and Tom Milne, ed., Ending War: The Force of Reason: Essays in Honour of Joseph Rotblat, NL, FRS (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press and NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. xi.

  47. Joseph Rotblat, “The atom bomb, Einstein and me,” Interview by Simon Rogers, The Guardian (January 19, 2005).

  48. Rotblat, Video Interview (ref. 18), video 5.

  49. Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience (ref. 10), p. 49.

  50. Joseph Rotblat, Papers of Joseph Rotblat (ref. 19), RTBT, D.61D.

  51. Rotblat, Video Interview (ref. 18), video 5.

  52. Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience (ref. 10), p. 295, n. 9.

  53. Barton J. Bernstein, “Reconsidering the ‘Atomic General’: Leslie R. Groves,” The Journal of Military History 67 (2003), 883–920, on 903.

  54. Testimony of Leslie R. Groves, in United States Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Transcript of Hearing before Personnel Security Board, Washington, D.C. April 12, 1954, through May 6, 1954 (reprinted Cambridge, Mass. and London, The MIT Press, 1971), pp. 163–180, on p. 173. Rotblat’s memory was not precisely accurate in his Video Interview (ref. 18), video 5.

  55. Nina Byers, “Physicists and the 1945 Decision to Drop the Bomb” (Los Angeles: Physics and Astronomy Department, UCLA, 2002), website < arxiv.org/html/physics/0210058v1? > , p. 4 of 11.

  56. Rotblat, “Leaving the bomb project” (ref. 13), p. 18.

  57. Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience (ref. 10), p. 51.

  58. Quoted in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p. 356.

  59. Quoted in Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience (ref. 10), p. 59.

  60. Brown, Neutron and the Bomb (ref. 20), p. 284.

  61. Martin Underwood, Joseph Rotblat: A Man of Conscience in the Nuclear Age (Brighton and Portland, Oregon: Sussex Academic Press, 2009), p. 23.

  62. Martin C. Underwood, “Joseph Rotblat, the Bomb and Anomalies from His Archive,” Science and Engineering Ethics 18 (2013), 487–490.

  63. Szasz, British Scientists (ref. 25), p. 57.

  64. Rotblat, “Leaving the bomb project” (ref. 13), p. 18.

  65. Michael Atiyah, “The Social Responsibility of Scientists,”in Bruce and Milne, Ending War (ref. 46), pp. 151–164, on p. 153.

  66. Rotblat, “Leaving the bomb project” (ref. 13), p. 17.

  67. Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, “About Pugwash,” website <http://www.pugwash.org/about.htm>.

  68. The Nobel Peace Prize 1995, website <www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1995/>.

  69. Quoted in David Krieger, “Joseph Rotblat and Peace,” in Braun, Hinde, Krieger, Kroto, and Milne, Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace (ref. 1), p. 53.

  70. Rotblat, “Remember Your Humanity” (ref. 32), p. 3 of 3.

Download references

Acknowledgments

I thank Dr. Martin Underwood and Professor Nick Jelley for their help with my paper. I also thank Roger H. Stuewer for his thoughtful and careful editorial work on my paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lucy Veys.

Additional information

Lucy Veys graduated from the University of Oxford in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts in Physics.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Veys, L. Joseph Rotblat: Moral Dilemmas and the Manhattan Project. Phys. Perspect. 15, 451–469 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-013-0125-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-013-0125-1

Keywords

  • Joseph Rotblat
  • James Chadwick
  • Otto Robert Frisch
  • Lise Meitner
  • Leslie R. Groves
  • Bertrand Russell
  • Ludwick Wertenstein
  • Frisch-Peierls Memorandum
  • MAUD Committee
  • Manhattan Project
  • Los Alamos
  • Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
  • Nobel Peace Prize
  • nuclear fission
  • atomic bomb
  • nuclear deterrence
  • responsibility of scientists
  • history of physics