Pugwash

• the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and to Joseph Rotblat, an anti-nuclear campaigner who helped found the organization and now chairs it
• the Pugwash Conferences bring together scientists, scholars and public figures from East and West to discuss nuclear and other security issues
• the meetings trace their origins to a 1955 anti-war manifesto drafted by British philosopher Bertrand Russell and signed by Albert Einstein, among others, at the height of East-West tensions, which called on the scientists of the world to ``assemble in conference to appraise the perils of weapons of mass destruction''
• two years later, the first meeting of scientists took place in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, about 70 miles from the provincial capital of Halifax, at the summer home of Canadian industrialist Cyrus Eaton; it was attended by 22 scientists from 10 countries
• Eaton, who made his fortune in utilities and the banking and steel industries, was born in Pugwash
• Thinkers' Lodge, his summer house, is a village landmark
• the Scottish influence in the village is so strong many of the street signs are in Gaelic and English.
• the village, takes its name from the Micmac Indian word Pagwechk, which means ``shallow water'' or ``shoal''.
• Pugwash conferences are still held most years in various locations around the world, and some are still held in Pugwash, bringing visitors from all over the globe to its quiet streets
• there have been more than 200 Pugwash conferences since 1957, attracting over 10,000 scientists, academics, politicians, and military figures
• participants are invited in a personal capacity, not as representatives of governments or institutions
• the meetings are closed to the press to encourage open debate, a summary report is issued at the end
• Pugwash conferences laid the groundwork for the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, and the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972

back