Physicists in Politics

MAR 01, 1999

Through their public opposition to the nuclear arms race and human rights violations, US physicists have played a pivotal role in setting the national and international political agenda.

DOI: 10.1063/1.882612

Kurt Gottfried

With the creation of the atomic bomb, physicists acquired a sudden and unprecedented entry into global politics. That the relationship between physicists and politicians would be a difficult one was apparent long before Hiroshima, when Niels Bohr sought to convey his prescient insights about the bomb’s political implications to Winston Churchill, and was harshly rebuffed

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More about the authors

Kurt Gottfried, Cornell University.