The Nobel Peace Prize 1995

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1995, in two equal parts, to Joseph Rotblat and to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms.

It is fifty years this year since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and forty years since the issuing of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. The Manifesto laid the foundations for the Pugwash Conferences which have maintained a high level of activity to this day. Joseph Rotblat was one of the eleven scientists behind the Manifesto and has since been the most important figure in the Pugwash work.

The Conferences are based on the recognition of the responsibility of scientists for their inventions. They have underlined the catastrophic consequences of the use of the new weapons. They have brought together scientists and decision-makers to collaborate across political divides on constructive proposals for reducing the nuclear threat.

The Pugwash Conferences are founded in the desire to see all nuclear arms destroyed and, ultimately, in a vision of other solutions to international disputes than war. The Pugwash Conference in Hiroshima in July this year declared that we have the opportunity today of approaching those goals. It is the Committee's hope that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1995 to Rotblat and to Pugwash will encourage world leaders to intensify their efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Oslo, October 13, 1995