69 



typical, screwy Szilard idea. That is, if you had an 

 accident, for example, and one American city was bombed, we 

 should have an agreement that one Russian city would be 

 bombed, and that would be the end of it, or vice versa. The 

 cities would be graded according to size and importance. If 

 New York was bombed, then you had have to bomb Moscow, but 

 if Kiev was bombed, then you would bomb Cincinnati or 

 something like that. 



Sharp: St. Louis or somewhere. 



Revelle: Yes, a moderate size city. 



He had gotten me there because he really wanted me to 

 be sort of the executive officer of Pugwash. I didn't want 

 to be, but I was at least willing to look at it. This was, 

 I guess, around 1960 or '61. I remember Jerry Wiesner was 

 at this meeting too and Ruth Adams, Bob Adams' wife, who was 

 really the kind of spirit of Pugwash. Of course, Bernie 

 Feld was there too. It was sort of a continuing group of 

 Americans who went to one meeting after the other. It was 

 about that time George Kistiakowsky got involved too, but 

 he was not there at Baden or at Udaipur either. 



Sharp: I was interested in the Pugwash conferences in what you saw 

 as your objectives in going. If you look at some of the 

 written material, the thing that mostly you're talking about 

 is the new interest that you were developing in the 

 less-developed nations and really how to help them. 



Revelle: That's right. 



Sharp: It began to really dovetail, especially in the later period 

 in the '70s then, with everything you were doing at the 

 center at Harvard. 



Revelle: That's right. 



An important meeting from my point of view was the Pugwash 

 meeting in Venice. 



Sharp: Which one was that? Or when was it? 



Revelle: I don't remember the time, but it was probably around 1970. 

 The reason that was important from my point of view was that 

 I proposed, and Eugene Rabinowitch strongly supported, the 

 idea of an international science foundation. 



From m^ point of view, this was the main outcome of 

 several Pugwash meetings — what became the International 

 Foundation for Science. The idea was to support research by 

 young research workers in their own countries, in developing 

 countries, like the National Science Foundation supports 

 scientists in the United States. 



What was happening at that time was a lot of people 

 were worried about the brain drain, and rightly so. There 

 were no jobs and no hope for careers for scientists in the 

 developing countries, so they came to the United States or 

 England or France instead, immigrated. 



