Remembering Joseph Rotblat,
Remembering our Humanity

4.11.2008

Joseph Rotblat was one of the great men of our time. As a young physicist from Poland, Rotblat realized that it might be possible to create an atomic weapon and worried that the Germans might succeed in developing such a weapon before the Allied powers. Due to this realization and his belief that the Allied powers needed a deterrent to a possible Nazi bomb, Rotblat agreed to work during World War II on the British bomb project and then on the US Manhattan Project.

When it became clear to him in late 1944 that the Germans would not succeed in creating an atomic weapon, Rotblat resigned from the Manhattan Project and returned to London. He was the only Allied scientist to resign from the bomb project as a matter of conscience.

read on

See also Nobel Foundation's website:
www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1995/rotblat-cv.html

6^th INESPE Lecture on the Social Responsibility of Engineers and Scientists

Why don't I take military funding?

Prof. Benjamin Kuipers, University of Texas at Austin
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 13.15 hours

Venue: Auditorium D, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen.

Abstract: I don't take funding from military agencies. Why not?
Mostly it's a testimony that it's possible to have a successful career in computer science without taking military funding. My position has its roots in the Vietnam War, when I was a conscientious objector, did alternative service instead of submitting to the draft, and joined the Society of Friends (Quakers). During the 1980s and 90s, the position seemed to lose some of its urgency, so it became more of a testimony about career paths.
Since September 11, 2001, all the urgency is back. The defense of our country is at stake, so this testimony becomes critical. In short, I believe that non-violent methods of conflict resolution provide the only methods for protecting our country against the deadly threats we face in the long run. Military action, with its inevitable consequences to civilian populations, creates and fuels deadly threats, and therefore increases the danger that our country faces.
I will discuss the origin and evolution of my beliefs and my attitudes toward the role of the military in our society, and towards military-funded research.

Benjamin Kuipers holds an endowed Professorship in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He investigates the representation of commonsense and expert knowledge, with particular emphasis on the effective use of incomplete knowledge. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College, and his Ph.D. from MIT. He has held research or faculty appointments at MIT, Tufts University, and the University of Texas. His research accomplishments include developing the TOUR model of
spatial knowledge in the cognitive map, the QSIM algorithm for qualitative simulation, the Algernon system for knowledge representation, and the Spatial Semantic Hierarchy model of knowledge for robot exploration and mapping. He has served as Department Chairman, and is a Fellow of AAAI and IEEE.

5^th INESPE Lecture on the Social Responsibility of Engineers and Scientists

Berkeley, Biology and British Petroleum: Public Academics and the Academician in a Corporatized World

Dr. Ignacio Chapela
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 14.15 at Auditorium A

Venue: Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen.

Abstract:
In 1997, and then again in 2007, the University of California at Berkeley was the epicenter of key developments in the history of public research institutions, universities and academe in general.The proposal to have intimate and very substantial financial relationships with two major transnational corporations (Novartis and British Petroleum, a.k.a. BP) was met, in both occasions, with opposition on the part of some faculty and many members of the public. The dynamics of these local developments can be seen as emblematic of much larger processes taking place within the Modern enterprise of a social programme based on innovation and RD&D (Research, Development and Delivery). This presentation will discuss the incorporation of Biology, through biotechnology, into the paradigm of RD&D progress, specifically from the viewpoint of Berkeley and the University of California. Here, the forces driving much of science and academe in our days are clearly discernible: on the side of industrial development those forces include corporatization, entrepreneurship, reliance on intellectual property protection and venture-capital, while on the other hand academia is impacted by the rise of big science, politization and militarization. How these forces work in tension with each other will be analyzed using the case-study of the presenter, who has been engaged in opposition to privatizing forces in Berkeley and to the final incorporation of Biology into the world of corporations and large, concentrated venture capital. In discussion with the audience, we will scrutinize the options available to individual scientists, engineers and academicians in general, in the face of forces that would appear overwhelming. What are the alternatives? How to balance public principles with personal interests? How is the public represented in the work of academe? Whence has academic freedom wandered?

Ignacio Chapela is an Associate Professor at Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. University of California, Berkeley.

See: www.inespe.org

Appeal

INES appeal for an International Einstein Year 2005

In the year 2005, scientists throughout the world will be celebrating the centenary of the theory of special relativity and the light-quantum hypothesis, both developed by Albert Einstein in 1905. The celebrations will also honour the 50th anniversary of Einstein's death in 1955...

read on …