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The Nuclear Age - A Curse and a Challenge. The role of Scientists (2001)

Author	J.Rotblat
Date	2001
Classification	6.01.0.40/80 (HISTORY / DEVELOPMENT NUCLEAR ENERGY)
Front

PREFACE

In mid-May 2001, Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat delivered the third Dag Hammarskjold 
Lecture in Uppsala, Sweden, on the subject of 'The Nuclear Age - A Curse and a 
Challenge: The Role of Scientists'. It was an extraordinary occasion. At the age of 
92 and after five and a half decades of tireless campaigning against nuclear weapons, 
Joseph Rotblat spoke as persuasively as ever, insisting on the inescapable 
responsibility of scientists towards humanity.
The Dag Hammarskjold Lecture is jointly organised by Uppsala University and the 
Dag Hammarskjold Foundation in memory of the second Secretary-General of the 
United Nations. The guideline established by the two institutions states that the 
person invited to deliver the lecture should be someone 'who has promoted, in 
ction and spirit, the values that inspired Dag Hammarskjold as Secretary-General 
of the United Nations and generally in his life: compassion, humanism and 
commitment to international solidarity and cooperation. Joseph Rotblat's life 
has consistently demonstrated these very qualities.
In his lecture, Joseph Rotblat starts by drawing attention to the fact that in January 
1946 the UN General Assembly, in its first resolution, called for the establishment 
of an Atomic Energy Commission to 'make specific proposals ... for the elimination 
from national arsenals of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable 
to mass destruction'. Yet, 55 years later, despite very many similar resolutions, 
'the nuclear-weapon states still ignore these resolutions and pursue policies that 
perpetuate the division of the world into nuclear haves and have-nots'.

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