Russell–Einstein Manifesto

The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on 9 July 1955 by Bertrand Russell in the midst of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. The signatories included eleven pre-eminent intellectuals and scientists, including Albert Einstein, who signed it just days before his death on 18 April 1955. A few days after the release, philanthropist Cyrus S. Eaton offered to sponsor a conference—called for in the manifesto—in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Eaton's birthplace. This conference was to be the first of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, held in July 1957.

The first detonation of an atomic weapon took place on 16 July 1945 in the desert north of Alamogordo, New Mexico. On 6 August 1945, the US dropped Little Boy on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and, three days later, Fat Man on Nagasaki. At least 100,000 civilians were killed outright by these two bombings.

On 18 August 1945, the Glasgow Forward published the first known recorded comment by Bertrand Russell on atomic weapons, which he began composing the day Nagasaki was bombed. It contained threads that would later appear in the manifesto:

The prospect for the human race is sombre beyond all precedent. Mankind to be averted.

After learning of the bombing of Hiroshima and seeing an impending nuclear arms race, Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds, remarked that he "became worried about the whole future of mankind".

Over the years that followed Russell and Rotblat worked on efforts to curb nuclear proliferation, collaborating with Albert Einstein and other scientists to compose what became known as the Russell–Einstein Manifesto.

...
Wikipedia