5.0 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | 1/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_of_the_Atomic_Scientists | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:20:10.934343+00:00 | kb-cron |
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a bi-monthly, nontechnical academic journal, published by an organization of the same name. The organization named "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" is a nonprofit organization concerning science and global security issues resulting from accelerating technological advances that have negative consequences for humanity. It publishes content both at a free-access website and through the journal. The organization has been publishing continuously since 1945, when it was founded by former Manhattan Project scientists as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago immediately following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The organization is also the keeper of the symbolic Doomsday Clock, the time of which is announced each January.
== Background == One of the driving forces behind the creation of the Bulletin was the amount of public interest surrounding atomic energy and rapid technological change at the dawn of the Atomic Age. In 1945 the public interest in atomic warfare and weaponry inspired contributors to the Bulletin to attempt to inform those interested about the dangers of the nuclear arms race they knew was coming and about the destruction that atomic war could bring about. To convey the particular peril posed by nuclear weapons, the Bulletin devised the Doomsday Clock in 1947, with an original setting of seven minutes to midnight. The minute hand of the Clock first moved closer to midnight in response to changing world events in 1949, following the first Soviet nuclear test. The Clock has been set forward and back over the years as circumstances have changed; as of 2026, it is set at 85 seconds to midnight. The Doomsday Clock is used to represent threats to humanity from a variety of sources: nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, climate change, and disruptive technologies. In 2015, the Bulletin unveiled its Doomsday Dashboard, an interactive infographic that illustrates some of the data the Bulletin's Science and Security Board takes into account when deciding the time of the Clock each year. As of August 2018, the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors boasts 14 Nobel Laureates. In the 1950s, the Bulletin was involved in the formation of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, annual conferences of scientists concerned about nuclear proliferation, and, more broadly, the role of science in modern society.
== History == In late 1945, scientists from the University of Chicago who had been involved in the Manhattan Project that had created the A-bomb formed a group using the name "Atomic Scientists of Chicago" and started publishing a newsletter titled Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago. The words of Chicago were dropped as of the seventh issue, of March 15, 1946, to reflect "the increasingly broad nature of the contents of, and the wider geographical distribution of the contributors to, the Bulletin". The founder and first editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was biophysicist Eugene Rabinowitch (1901–1973). He founded the magazine, then a newsletter, with physicist Hyman Goldsmith. Rabinowitch was a professor of botany and biophysics at the University of Illinois and was also a founding member of the Continuing Committee for the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In addition to Rabinowitch and Goldsmith, contributors have included: Morton Grodzins, Hans Bethe, Anatoli Blagonravov, Max Born, Harrison Brown, Stuart Chase, Brock Chisholm, E.U. Condon, Albert Einstein, E.K. Fedorov, Bernard T. Feld, James Franck, Ralph E. Lapp, Richard S. Leghorn, J. Robert Oppenheimer (first chairman of the board of the organization), Lord Boyd Orr, Michael Polanyi, Louis Ridenour, Bertrand Russell, Nikolay Semyonov, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, A.V. Topchiev, Harold C. Urey, Paul Weiss, James L. Tuck, among many others. In 1949, the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science incorporated as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization to serve as the parent organization and fundraising mechanism of the Bulletin. In 2003, the board of directors voted to change the foundation's name to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
== Purpose == The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists began as an emergency action undertaken by scientists who saw urgent need for an immediate educational program about atomic weapons. The intention was to educate fellow scientists about the relationship between their world of science and the world of national and international politics. A second was to help the American people understand what nuclear energy and its possible applications to war meant. The Bulletin contributors believed the atom bomb would only be the first of many dangers. The aim of the Bulletin was to carry out the long, sustained effort of educating people about the realities of the scientific age.
== Doomsday Clock ==