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III BASIC IDEAS, BASIC RESEARCH — INTERNATIONALLY SPEAKING 



Pugwash Conferences, 1960s-1970s 



Sharp: I thought we might go ahead and talk about Pugwash. 



Revelle: I made myself a little list about that. 



Let's follow on from this particular discussion 

 because there was a meeting that fall in 1963 in Udaipur in 

 the state of Rajastnan at the Lake Palace. Rajastnan was 

 formally known at Raj paitawa, and it was divided up into a 

 lot of little kingdoms. One of them was the little kingdom 

 of Udaipur, that was the capital city. Its most striking 

 feature is a lake right in the middle of this quite dry 

 country. In the middle of the lake was Lake Palace, made 

 out of marble, a beautiful thing. The raja of Udaipur made 

 it into a hotel. It's called the Lake Palace Hotel and it's 

 a very nice place to stay. 



In that same lake he had given refuge to the guy that 

 built the Taj Mahal, Shah Ishak, before he became king. The 

 Mogul emperors, each of their sons revolted against their 

 father, and he revolted against his father. His name was 

 Jehengir. His father drove him out. Eventually he 

 overthrew his father, but for many years he was just 

 rebelling against him, and he took refuge in this lake, on 

 another island in the lake, which you always go to see if 

 you are at the Lake Palace. 



Anyhow, there was a Pugwash meeting there. Mrs. 

 Gandhi attended it. This was long before she was prime 

 minister. She was then sort of the companion of her father. 

 At that time he had had a stroke. Harrison Brown was at 

 that meeting and Bernie Feld. I don't remember who else. 



Pugwash meetings are usually divided into four working 

 groups. Their custom was that one of the working groups 

 is on developing countries . The most important one was the 

 one on arms control, but I usually paid little attention to 

 that, and was involved almost entirely with the working 

 group on development. 



Sharp: When people talk about the Pugwash conferences, the arms 

 control issue is usually seen as the issue. 



Revelle: That's correct. 



Sharp: It obviously had all these other issues that it was dealing 

 with. If you look at some of the Pugwash conference 

 material over the years, assisting developing countries, 

 ideas of scientific development such as the kind of stuff 

 you have done, it makes much more of an impact in the later 

 conferences than it does in the earlier ones, the attention 

 in the reports it gets. 



Revelle: That's correct. The reason for that was that they brought 

 in more countries, and most of the developing countries 

 couldn't care less about the nuclear issue between the US 



