October 13, 1995
Web posted at: 10:55 p.m. EDT (0255 GMT)
From Correspondent Rob Reynolds
LONDON (CNN) -- Joseph Rotblat emerged from the obscurity of a lifetime of fighting for nuclear disarmament into the glare of media attention Friday. "I am very glad; I am overwhelmed," said Rotblat, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1995.
The Nobel Committee said Rotblat and the Pugwash Group of anti-nuclear scientists he helped found were honored in part as a protest against the testing of nuclear weapons by France and China. At a crowded news conference, Rotblat condemned both countries' testing policies. "I think it's an outrage," he said. "I feel it should not have happened."
But Rotblat said the outcry over the tests was beneficial. "It showed that the public in general is against nuclear weapons, so that was very good because it raised the consciousness of the people."
The nuclear weapons that Rotblat spent a lifetime trying to eliminate were, in part, a product of his own efforts. A brilliant physicist, he worked on the wartime Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb.
Rotblat left the project before the first test in the New Mexico desert. "I did not expect that it would be used as soon as it was made, without warning and against civilian populations," Rotblat said. "It had a devastating effect on me.
Ten years later, Rotblat and other eminent scientists formed the Pugwash Group. "We worked all the time, put on pressure on both sides to see the folly of continuing with the arms race." (270K AIFF sound or 270K WAV sound)
Rotblat, who is 86, lives in a modest house in a London suburb. His wife and children were murdered by the Nazis in his native Poland. He lives with his sister-in-law. "I am very proud," said his sister-in-law Maria Rotblat. "I am also proud before he won it. He's a very big man."
The Cold War is over and the imminent threat of worldwide nuclear destruction has faded. But Rotblat says his work is not finished.
"If we just follow the agreement reached now, the strategic weapons, in other words, are being reduced by the year 2003. When the second agreement has been implemented, there will still be left something like 15,000 nuclear warheads in the world's arsenals. And I don't believe that a world with all these weapons could be considered safe."
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