Science and Scientists in the Public Arena

Abstract

have become part of political public in a way in which they have never been before. Although in nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there were scientists who left science to become professional politicians, and although there were scientists who became organizers of scientific institutions and scientists who made representations on behalf of science before politicians, civil servants, and larger public, and there were many who worked quietly as scientists in governmental and industrial research institutions, political issues did not arouse scientists in way that they do now. They did not press upon them through invasive presence of environing society. They did not take such a hold on their sentiments and their moral imagination. Fifty years ago, when I first became interested in these problems, no one, not even H. G. Wells and certainly not I, could have predicted what has since happened. I shall begin on an autobiographical note. From early autumn of 1945, I was drawn into close relations with the movement of atomic scientists. It happened because at end of August ofthat year, Leo Szilard, Hungarian-born physicist whose research had contributed to building first sustained nuclear chain reaction and who was instrumental in initiating Manhattan Project for development of atomic bomb, had heard that I was trying to work out a scheme to prevent production of atomic bombs by any country. (It was a very harebrained scheme.) He presented himself to me, probably with a view to examining my seriousness and my capacity for imagination and my fitness for collaboration with him in his political schemes and campaigns. As a result of our conversations, we, with support of Robert Hutchins, organized a conference at University of Chicago on atomic bomb and world peace. It was held in last week of September 1945. Among those who participated were Harold Urey, Farrington

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