A Human Scientist: Sir Joseph Rotblat
Most medical students will recall having Global Health lectures based at the Joseph Rotblat Building in Charterhouse Square. And indeed, it is a shame that many of us have never stepped foot in a building named after one of the six Barts Nobel Laureates.
Among that elite group, Sir Joseph Rotblat is something of an oddity. Not because he was not a qualified medical practitioner. Nor because he was a member of the faculty (rather than an alumnus). Indeed, both of these are also true of Sir John Vane, a man with whom Rotblat has much in common, both having the honour of a building at Charterhouse named after them, both with Jewish heritages, and both lecturing at Barts in the 1980s. As a matter of fact, one of the things which separates them is actually an honorary degree from a Polish university, Vane receiving that honour, despite the Polish-born Rotblat being educated in Warsaw.
But the reason Joseph Rotblat is quite unique amongst this company is that if I were to ask you what Nobel Prize he won, you might reasonably guess Physiology or Medicine, much like the rest. But in fact, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995, for “efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms”.
What is most interesting is that if I gave you a second guess (after Physiology or Medicine), after informing you of his role at the medical college, you might have suggested Sir Joseph Rotblat would have won the Nobel Prize for Physics. Because Joseph Rotblat initially joined St Bartholomew’s Hospital as the Professor of Physics in 1949, a role in which he would remain until his retirement.
The requirement of a Professor of Physics in a medical school was evident since the 1890s, given the importance of medical physics in both diagnosis and treatment of patients. In fact, it was The London Hospital, in 1896, which was the first UK hospital to use X-Rays (for the treatment of ringworm of the scalp), only a few months after their discovery by Wilhelm Röntgen (a breakthrough for which he would win the first ever Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901).
As a result, a position for a Lecturer in Physics existed at St Bartholomew’s Hospital since Frederick Womack in 1892. But it was his successor and Rotblat’s predecessor, Frank Lloyd Hopwood, who was the first Professor of Physics from 1924, and credited with building the development up from scratch after he first joined as an assistant physicist in 1906.
The field of physics has long played an important role in healthcare. Queen Mary’s only true alumnus who would go on to win a Nobel Prize, Sir Peter Mansfield, was a physicist who won the Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 for “discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging.” It is evidence of the undeniable requirement of a multi-faculty approach to medicine, which was a key motivation of mergers of the United Hospital medical schools in the 1990s.
But back to the oddity of Joseph Rotblat. While it may not have been his scientific research which won him a Nobel Prize, he was far from a slouch. His work on splitting the atom made him realise in 1939 that it was possible to create an atomic bomb. It was a horrifying thought but at the time, he felt it was a necessary deterrent should Nazi Germany develop their own weapon of mass destruction. Despite being neither a British nor American citizen, he was invited to join the Manhattan Project. He would eventually withdraw in 1943, fearing the use of nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union too.
After the War, Rotblat was the youngest signatory of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955, which highlighted the dangers of nuclear weapons, and established the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in 1957, an organisation which works towards ending war and eliminating weapons of mass destruction. Rotblat’s research identified the effect of nuclear fallout (i.e. following use of nuclear weapons) on the long-term health of the population, showing its direct link to issues with fertility and cancer.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Rotblat won the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with the Pugwash Conferences. He accepted the Prize with a call to peace. He also appealed to scientists to consider the ethical consequences of their work. It was time, he suggested, “to formulate guidelines for the ethical conduct of scientist, perhaps in the form of a voluntary Hippocratic Oath.” Evidence perhaps of the influence of the medical professionals he was surrounded by.
A Barts man, Rotblat ended his speech with a quote from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto and a sentence reminiscent of the motto of The London: “Above all, remember your humanity.”
(Image Credit: The Norwegian Nobel Institute)
