The fully transcribed video of Dr. Zia Mian’s lecture, “Out of the Nuclear Shadow: Scientists and the Struggle Against the Bomb,” is now available on the website of the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center. Mian gave the talk on the occasion of his receipt of the Linus Pauling Legacy Award, presented on April 21, 2014. Mian was the eighth recipient of this award, granted every other year by the OSU Libraries.
In his lecture, Mian provides an overview of the responsibilities that scientists have historically assumed with respect to nuclear issues, pointing to Linus Pauling and Leó Szilárd as particularly impactful examples for later generations. Moving to contemporary affairs, Mian paints a downbeat picture of current trends in the nuclear realm, noting the United States’ plan to massively modernize its nuclear complex and the continuation of sabre-rattling in nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
In the midst of this alarming scene, Mian notes that the world’s attention is increasingly moving away from nuclear issues as climate change and other problems of the day capture the news cycle. Mian reiterates the devastating impact that a nuclear conflagration would make upon Earth; worldwide famine and extreme planetary cooling being among the likely outcomes. The scenario is such that Mian, in echoing the Pugwash Conference of 1955, suggests that “those who know the most are the most gloomy.”
Zia Mian directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia, at the Program on Science and Global Security. The editor of numerous books, his research and teaching focuses on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy policy, especially in Pakistan and India, and on issues of nuclear disarmament and peace. He has also produced two documentary films, “Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow” (2001) and “Crossing the Lines: Kashmir, Pakistan, India” (2004). He is Co-Editor of Science & Global Security, an international journal of technical analysis for arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation policy. He is also a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM).
Previously, he has taught at Yale University and Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and worked at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge (Mass.), and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad. He has a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Our past coverage of Mian’s work and visit - including an exclusive interview conducted by the Pauling Blog – is available here. Additional information on the history of the Pauling Legacy Award, as well as links to four additional past lectures by Roald Hoffmann, Roger Kornberg, Roderick MacKinnon and John D. Roberts, is available at the award’s homepage.
