Conscience and Science
in the Nuclear Age:
The Legacies of
J. Robert Oppenheimer and Andrei Sakharov
J. Robert Oppenheimer is credited
with being a founding father of the
American school of theoretical phys-
ics. When World War II began, Oppen-
heimer became involved in the efforts
to develop an atomic bom. In June
1942, General Leslie Groves appoint-
ed Oppenheimer as the scientific di-
rector of the Manhattan Project. He
brought the best minds in physics to
work on the problem of creating an
atomic bomb. He is often referred to
as the “father” of the atomic bomb. The joint work of the scientists
at Los Alamos resulted in the first nuclear explosion at Alamagordo
on July 16, 1945, which Oppenheimer named “Trinity.” After the
war, Oppenheimer was appointed Chairman of the General Advisory
Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), serving from
1947 to 1952. It was in this role that he voiced strong opposition to
the development of the hydrogen bomb.
with
Martin J. Sherwin and Joshua Rubenstein
Recipients of the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award
Martin J. Sherwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning
American historian. His scholarship mostly
concerns the history of the development of
atomic energy and nuclear proliferation. He
was the long-time Walter S. Dickson profes-
sor of English and American history at Tufts
University until his retirement in May 2007.
He is now a professor emeritus of Tufts and
a University Professor at George Mason Uni-
versity. He has received numerous awards
and grants. He and co-author Kai Bird shared the Pulitzer Prize for
Biography/Autobiography in 2006, for their book on Robert Oppen-
heimer’s life, titled American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy
of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Sherwin worked on the book for two de-
cades before collaborating on the writing with Bird. Sherwin also
wrote A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and its Legacies, which won
the Stuart L. Bernath Prize and the American History Book Prize.
Sherwin serves on the board of The Nation magazine, to which he is
a regular contributor.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 27,
CABOT AUDITORIUM, 8:00pm
Andrei Sakharov was a Soviet
physicist who became, in the words
of the Nobel Peace Committee, a
spokesman for the conscience of
mankind. He was fascinated by fun-
damental physics and cosmology,
but first he spent two decades de-
signing nuclear weapons. He came
to be regarded as the father of the
Soviet hydrogen bomb, contributing
perhaps more than anyone else to
the military might of the USSR. But
gradually Sakharov became one of the regime’s most courageous
critics, a defender of human rights and democracy. He could not
be silenced, and helped bring down one of history’s most powerful
dictatorships.
Joshua Rubenstein has been professionally
involved with human rights and internation-
al affairs for 30 years as an activist, schol-
ar and journalist with particular expertise
in Soviet affairs. A long-time Associate of
Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eur-
asian Studies, he has made many research
trips to Moscow and other Russian cities.
He has lectured and written widely on the
Soviet human rights movement, including a
series of lectures in Russian at the Mendeleev Institute in Moscow in
the fall of 1990 and in the spring of 1991. Since 1975, Mr. Ruben-
stein has been the Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty Interna-
tional USA, overseeing Amnesty’s work in New England, New York
and New Jersey. He is author of Soviet Dissidents, Their Struggle
for Human Rights (1980) and Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: the Postwar
Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which was awarded
the National Jewish Book Award in 2001-2002. He is the co-editor of
The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov.
This is the first event of a new
Tufts Pugwash chapter
For more information: www.tuftsgloballeadership.org or x73314