http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,1561328,00.html?gusrc=rssMan of peace dies - scientist who turned back on A-bomb project
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Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday September 2, 2005
The Guardian
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Scientists yesterday paid tribute to Sir Joseph Rotblat, the nuclear physicist and Nobel peace prize winner who resigned from the Manhattan Project to become a campaigner for nuclear disarmament. He died peacefully in his sleep on Wednesday at his London home, aged 96.
Polish born, Rotblat started work on nuclear weapons at Liverpool University in 1939. He moved to Los Alamos, the US nuclear weapons laboratory and joined the Manhattan project, in the belief that a nuclear bomb was the only realistic deterrent against the Nazis who were also pursuing the bomb.
"In 1944, when I learned the Germans had given up the project, the whole rationale for my being there disappeared," Sir Joseph told the Guardian this year.
He became the only scientist to resign from the project and was accused by the US of being a spy.
On condition he severed all contact with other scientists on the Manhattan project, he returned to the UK to pursue medical physics at St Bartholomew's hospital in London.
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