70th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto
“Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”
On 8 July 2025 at the Royal Society in London, an event was held to mark the 70th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto put together by Lord Betrand Russell.
The Manifesto was signed, amongst others by Joseph Rotblatt FRS , the only scientist to resign from the Manhattan Project on moral grounds. It was also signed, as his last public act before his death nine days later, by Albert Einstein.
The Russell- Einstein Manifesto was written at the height of the Cold War, and it calls on scientists, governments and all of mankind to be aware of the critical dangers of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and to choose peace and prosperity rather than war. The terms in which it is written have a startling immediacy across seven decades to our own troubled times:
“Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black, then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be understood both in the East and in the West.
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death”.
The Manifesto gave rise to the Pugwash Conferences named after the town in Nova Scotia where their promoter came from. The Pugwash Conferences have played a major part through the Cold War, and since, in maintaining lines of communication between scientists and governments, and in promoting or contributing to some of the key arms control measures, including the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997.
Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 "for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms".
At this event put on by the British Pugwash Conferences, with strong support from the Royal Society, it was fascinating and moving to hear Talia Weiss Director of International Student Young Pugwash reading the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. There were also compelling contributions from political leaders, experts on Iraq, China, Russia, the USA, the UK, Sweden and Argentina, and Fellows of the Royal Society, with the last word from its former President and Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees of Ludlow FRS.