May/June 1999
Vol. 55, No. 3
BULLETINS
Simpson wins Szilard
award
The American Physical Society presented John A. Simpson with
its 1999 Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the Public Interest
at its centennial meeting in Atlanta in March. During World War
II, Szilard and Simpson worked in the Manhattan Project's "Met
Lab" at the University of Chicago. After the end of the
war, both vigorously championed the idea that atomic weapons
should never again be used in war. Simpson became one of the
principal founders of the Bulletin; Szilard later started the
Council for a Livable World.
Simpson began focusing on the shape of the post-war world in
the fall of 1944, when he helped start a series of discussions
among younger Met Lab scientists regarding the long-range implications
of their work. After the war ended, Simpson became a faculty
member at the university. Chancellor Robert Hutchins, however,
gave Simpson--then in his late 20s--free rein to help organize
scientists around nuclear policy issues.
Hutchins also encouraged Simpson to spend time in Washington,
lobbying Congress on behalf of the civilian control of atomic
energy in the United States, and for the international control
of atomic energy under U.N. auspices. In August 1945 Simpson
became the first chairman of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago,
the organization that started the Bulletin. He was also one of
the founders of the Federation of Atomic Scientists, which became
the Federation of American Scientists.
The Szilard Award cites Simpson's "leading role in educating
scientists, members of Congress, and the public on the civilian
control of nuclear policy." But it also notes his "critical
efforts in the planning and execution of the International Geophysical
Year, which established in 1957 a successful model for today's
global scale scientific
endeavors."
International cooperation among scientists has long been one
of Simpson's passions. He abandoned weapons work after the war
and became one of the world's leading astrophysicists. Even in
the depths of the Cold War, he promoted cooperation in research
and the free exchange of ideas between Soviet and Western scientists.
Simpson, who now chairs the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors, previously
received the NASA Medal for Scientific Achievement,
the U.N.'s cospar Award for Scientific Research in Space, the
Bruno Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society, and
the Arctowski Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.