Pugwash Conferences

Pugwash Conferences, series of international meetings of scientists to discuss problems of nuclear weapons and world security. The first of the conferences met in July 1957 at the estate of the American philanthropist Cyrus Eaton in the village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, in response to an appeal by Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, and other prominent scientific figures. Subsequent conferences were held in many countries, including the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Yugoslavia, India, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Sweden, and the United States.

The chief concern of Pugwash was to bring together leading scholars from many countries to discuss ways of reducing armaments and tempering the arms race. During the Cold War it was one of the few lines of open communication between the United States and the Soviet Union. Another purpose was to examine the social responsibility of scientists toward such world problems as economic development, population growth, and environmental damage.

The conferences are sponsored by the Pugwash organization, which consists of national Pugwash groups under the guidance of a president, a secretary-general, and an elected council based in London. During the years after its founding, the Pugwash organization issued a number of reports on problems of arms control and disarmament. Its spokesmen credited these reports with having helped to prepare the way for the major international treaties limiting the development and testing of nuclear weapons. In 1995 the Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded jointly to the Pugwash organization and to Joseph Rotblat—Pugwash founding member, secretary-general (1957–73), and president (1988–97).