A Physicist in the Corridors of Power: P. M. S. Blackett's Opposition to Atomic Weapons Following the War
Abstract
. Blackett had been a naval officer during the First World War, a veteran of Ernest Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory and head of the physics department at Manchester in the interwar years, and he was a founder of operational research during the Second World War. Vilified in the British and American press in the 1940s and 1950s, he continued to contest prevailing nuclear weapons strategy, finding a more favorable reception for his arguments by the early 1960s. This paper examines the publication and reception of Blackett's views on atomic weapons, analyzing the risks to a physicist who writes about a subject other than physics, as well as the circumstances that might compel one to do so.
- Publication:
-
Physics in Perspective
- Pub Date:
- June 1999
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s000160050013
- Bibcode:
- 1999PhP.....1..136N
- Keywords:
-
- Key words: Atomic energy;
- atomic weapons;
- P. M. S. Blackett;
- Cold War;
- Labour Party;
- nuclear physics;
- nuclear strategy;
- operational research;
- physics;
- politics;
- Royal Navy;
- C. P. Snow;
- socialism;
- UK;
- USA;
- USSR.;
- Atomic energy;
- USSR