70 



Sharp: 

 Revelle: 



The other problem was that most of these people had 

 been trained in the United States or in the United Kingdom 

 by fundamental physicists and chemists, people that were 

 interested in basic research, like on the high-energy 

 physics or cosmic rays or something equally esoteric which 

 had practically nothing to do with the problems of their own 

 countries. 



We thought that maybe we could sort of divert their 

 interest toward more practical problems of their own 

 countries if we supported their research, in their country. 

 I proposed this idea at the Venice Pugwash meeting. 



One person I remember who was there the first time was 

 Lailah Hamansy, this woman I told you about from Egypt, the 

 fat Nefretiti, or plump Nefretiti, and that was interesting 

 because there were Israeli people there too, and she was 

 quite pro-Egyptian. She didn't like Israelis very well! 



No, not very much at all. 



But in any case, the Israelis who were there and Lailah did 

 talk about their problems. The only time they did have a 

 chance to communicate was at these Pugwash meetings . I 

 don't remember whether there were any other Egyptians or not 

 at that meeting. 



Anyhow, coming back to the IFS [International 

 Foundation for Science] , that was proposed in our working 

 group on developing country problems, strongly supported by 

 Eugene Rabinowitch and made one of the major recommendations 

 of the conference. In several other meetings, one at Sochi 

 in Russia, one at Stockholm in Sweden, and in Fontana in 

 wherever it was, Illinois or Wisconsin. 



Sharp: 



That's Wisconsin. That's 1971. 



Pugwash and Roots of the International Foundation for 

 Science 



Revelle: In all of these we elaborated this idea and had a special 



sort of panel to develop plans for the IFS. The problem was 

 to get people like Ashok Khosia from India, who was very 

 anti-Western, and very suspicious of any AID program thing, 

 it was just a capitalist trick, to go along with it, with 

 this proposal, to get a plan in such a way that they would 

 feel comfortable with it. We worked on this at several of 

 these meetings, and finally came out with a pretty good 

 plan. 



Sharp: What was the funding idea? 



Revelle: The funding idea was that it should be a non-governmental 

 organization, funded by national academies, or by 

 governments through their academies. That's the way it 

 worked out in the long run anyhow. 



Harrison Brown and I presented this idea at the United 



