Andrei Sakharov Prize
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To recognize outstanding leadership and/or achievements of scientists in upholding human rights. The Prize consists of $10,000 and an allowance for travel to the meeting of the Society at which the Prize will be presented. It is intended that the Prize be awarded every other year, at a general meeting of the American Physical Society.
Establishment & Support
The Sakharov Prize is named in recognition of the courageous and effective work of Andrei Sakharov on behalf of human rights, to the detriment of his own scientific career and despite the loss of his own personal freedom. The Prize is endowed by contributions from friends of Andrei Sakharov.
Rules & Eligibility
The prize normally will be awarded to one or more physicists, but scientists in other fields may be eligible if the selection committee feels their qualifications are appropriate. Nominations are active for three consecutive reviews.
Nomination & Selection Process
This year’s deadline has passed. Please check back soon for next year’s nomination information and deadline.
2008 Selection Committee: Andrew M. Sessler, Edward Gerjuoy, Yuri Orlov, Joel Primack, Manyee Betty Tsang
Letters
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Misuse of Einstein’s Relativity Theory
The Committee on the International Freedom of Scientists (CIFS) of the American Physical Society found it very inappropriate for President Jiang of the People’s Republic of China to use Einstein’s theory of relativity to justify his Government’s intolerance of different opinions and violation of human rights. President Jiang did this in an interview by the Washington Post prior to his visit to the United States (published in the Washington Post on October 19, 1997) and again at the joint Press Conference with President Clinton on Wednesday, October 29, 1997. That statement reads: “The theory of relativity worked out by Mr. (Albert) Einstein, which is in the domain of natural science, I believe can also be applied to the political field. Both democracy and human rights are relative concepts and not absolute and general.”
Meanwhile, Prof. Xu Liangying, the translator of Einstein’s three volumes of scientific work into the Chinese language, has been under virtual house arrest in Beijing for the last few years.
Einstein’s theory of relativity is based on the assumption that physical laws are invariant under relative motion. An appropriate analogy would be the inviolability of human rights under all conditions. Here we note that the Declaration of Human Rights signed by China and other United Nations member countries is universal, not relative. It is wrong to use the theory of relativity to illustrate moral relativism.
Einstein was an eminent scientist who was concerned about human affairs. His work not only influenced the career choice of Prof. Xu Liangying, the translator of Einstein’s work, but also his political beliefs. In Oct. 1992, Prof. Xu Liangying wrote an article titled: “Without Democracy There Will be No Reform” for the Chinese magazine Future and Development. After the article was published, all copies of that issue were seized. In March, 1994, he appealed to the Chinese authorities to release all political prisoners. In May, 1995, together with 45 prominent intellectuals in China, he wrote a petition letter to the Chinese Government titled “Tolerance is Essential to Modernization” asking the Chinese Government to show tolerance towards political thoughts and religious beliefs, and to reassess the tragic events that occurred at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. Both the 1994 and 1995 letters were published in the New York Times or reported in the Washington Post. In response, the Chinese Government placed guards outside Prof. Xu’s residence to monitor his movements, took measures to prevent American physicists from visiting him, and harassed and sometimes detained his Chinese visitors.
To respect Einstein, we call on President Jiang to respect Prof. Xu Liangying’s rights to freedom of speech guaranteed under the Chinese Constitution. We also ask the Chinese Government to stop harassing Prof. Xu Liangying and his friends and to release Wang Dan and other intellectuals who were detained and imprisoned after signing the 1995 petition letter.
Ke Chiang Hsieh
CIFS Chair
Letters to the editor are welcomed from the membership. Letters must be signed and should include an address and daytime telephone number. The APS reserves the right to select and to edit for length or clarity. All correspondence regarding APS News should be directed to: Editor, APS News, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
F O R U M O N P H Y S I C S & S O C I E T Y
of The American Physical Society
July 2005
APS HOME
ARTICLES
The American Physical Society’s Involvementin the Defense of Human Rights
Edward Gerjuoy
(Adapted from paper given at FPS Session, APS Meeting March 2005)
The objective of this paper is to describe the history of our Society’s past involvement in the defense of human rights.
Here is what the APS Bylaws say about CIFS:
The membership of the Committee on International Freedom of Scientists shall consist of nine members appointed by the President-Elect to staggered three-year terms. The President-Elect shall appoint the Chairperson from among the members. The Committee shall be responsible for monitoring concerns regarding the human rights of scientists throughout the world. It shall apprise the President, the Executive Board and Council of problems encountered by scientists in the pursuit of their scientific interests or in effecting satisfactory communication with other scientists and may recommend to the President, the Executive Board and Council appropriate courses of action designed to alleviate such problems.
Note that the Bylaws do not restrict CIFS actions to matters affecting the APS and its physicist members, or even to matters affecting physicists worldwide whether APS members or not. Instead CIFS is affirmatively charged to monitor concerns regarding the human rights of scientists, not merely physicists, throughout the world. Moreover the APS has been willing to put its money where its mouth is. The financial contributions by APS to its human rights activities, expended on items such as staff time, travel, etc., amount to about $65,000 to $70,000 per year, above and beyond the valuation one might put on the time of the APS members who voluntarily serve on CIFS.
A primary objective of this paper is to acquaint this audience with some of the many actions CIFS has undertaken in its attempts to alleviate the human rights violations scientists worldwide have suffered. Until 1976 the APS had no formal mechanisms for engaging in human rights activities. Indeed until 1974 the APS had no formal mechanisms for any public affairs involvements, which is not to say that before 1974 the APS had been indifferent to public affairs.
In 1974, however, the Society created a Bylaws Committee called the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA), whose charge was to advise the APS Council on public affairs issues. POPA soon came to the conclusion that public affairs issues of APS concern had to include human rights violations the world over. POPA therefore set up a subcommittee to advise POPA, and ultimately the APS, on matters falling under the rubric of international human rights violations. By early 1976 this subcommittee had begun to function, and had been named the Committee on International Freedom of Scientists.
The CIFS’ first report, dated April 1976 said:
The Committee was formed to deal with those matters of an international nature that endanger the abilities of scientists to function as scientists. The Committee is to be particularly concerned with acts of governments or organizations, which through violation of generally recognized human rights, restrict or destroy the ability of scientists to function as such. The particular motivation for formation of the committee was the situation of the Soviet Refusniks; however, the province of the Committee is to cover all international matters infringing freedom of scientists as such. The title of the Committee has been chosen, with this in mind, after much discussion.
Except for its explicit reference to the refusniks, Soviet Jews who had lost their jobs and related privileges after requesting permission to emigrate to Israel, this first report of CIFS does not greatly differ from the CIFS’ charge prescribed in the present APS Bylaws. The APS luminaries who were consulted on the wording of CIFS’ province and who chose CIFS’ name only “after much discussion,” included: William Fowler, Phil Morse, Herman Feshbach, John Wheeler, and Ernest Henley. Fowler was the APS President at the time, and every one of the other physicists just listed also served as APS President at some other time.
In 1980, only four years after CIFS had begun its work, the APS Council split CIFS from its parent APS committee POPA and established CIFS as an independent Bylaws committee with essentially the same charge it has today. In the interim the APS Council had become so convinced of the importance of its human rights activities that in May 1978 it published, in the Bulletin of the APS, a “Statement of Principles for the American Physical Society Activities With Regard to Human Rights,” whose opening paragraph stated:
[The APS activities in the area of human rights of scientists] reflect the APS’s conviction that science and scientific activity are important for the dignity of man and the future of civilization, and that interference with science anywhere is potentially harmful to all mankind and to society everywhere.
Those APS activities can be listed under at least six different subheadings. Only two of these activity subheadings (not necessarily the most important) will be discussed in any detail, namely the small committee program and letter writing, though brief mention will be made of all six..
CIFS’ first Chair, during the years 1976-78 when CIFS still was a subcommittee of POPA, was Bernard Cooper. Under Cooper, CIFS initiated its program of forming so-called “small committees” for persecuted scientists, following a practice developed (I believe) by Amnesty International. Each small committee, consisting usually of three persons, “adopts” a single persecuted scientist and agrees to write said scientist and his/her family on a regular basis, whether or not there is evidence the letters are being received. The idea is that these letters, if received by the intended recipient and family, surely will fulfill the useful function of heartening them. But, and this is the major point, even if the letters are being intercepted by the persecuting nation’s secret police and/or prison officials, the letters are demonstrating that the victimized scientist has not been forgotten by the outside world, thereby hopefully easing the scientist’s treatment or at least deterring extreme persecutions like torture.
I judge that of the many APS human rights activities, its small committee program has been one of the least publicized, to APS members as well as to the general public, which is the main reason I have chosen to devote a major portion of this paper to this APS activity. The program began with only a few committees, but the number of committees grew rapidly, so that it soon proved necessary for the program to have a “coordinator”. For example, in 1983 there already were 97 small committee members, coordinated by Julian Heicklen of the Penn State University Dept. of Chemistry, writing to 63 oppressed scientists. By 1985 these numbers had increased, to 84 small committees with a total membership of 167. Most of the small committee members were physicists, and just about all of them were scientists. Many of the small committee members had accepted the responsibility of writing to more than one victimized scientist. The APS, the world, owes a long overdue expression of gratitude to every one of those small committee members who essentially anonymously, without fanfare, regularly wrote so many letters of encouragement to so many human rights victims, often with little expectation that the letters would reach their intended recipients. Heartfelt thanks also are owed to the various small committee coordinators, especially to Julian Heicklen, to Edward Stern of the University of Washington, and to Bernard Feldman of the University of Missouri, each of whom was willing to undertake the important task of coordinating the small committees even though coordination required an inordinate expenditure of time.
The number of small committees reached its maximum of 102 in 1986, but decreased fairly steadily thereafter. By 2000 the number had fallen to 10, still being coordinated by Feldman. In 2001 CIFS voted to terminate its small committee program, therewith pretty much ending organized letter writing by APS members to human rights victims. Why the yearly numbers of small committees rose and fell as they did merits some comments, which I will offer in a moment. I first want to say, however, that even if the small committee format has outlived its usefulness, I greatly regret that the APS has not retained some mechanism whereby regular communications to selected human rights victims and their families, serving the morale raising and related functions I have described, can be efficiently initiated.
Of the 84 scientists being supported by small committees in 1985, all but two were in the Soviet Union; the two non-Soviet scientists were Polish. This small committee singling out of Soviet scientists is easy to understand. By the 1970s the United States physics community had become well acquainted, personally as well as professionally, with the Soviet physics community; certainly in those years the American physics community was far better acquainted with the Soviet physics community than with any other physics community living under a repressive regime, e.g., the Chinese physics community. Thus the ruthless Soviet persecution of large numbers of scientists in the 1970s and 1980s, merely for peacefully criticizing their government or for seeking to emigrate, drew the attention of many American physicists and even earned recognition in CIFS’ original 1976 province, which (as you will recall) said that “the particular motivation” for the formation of CIFS was “the situation of the Soviet Refusniks”.
Soviet physicists for whom small committees were formed during the 1970s and 1980s include well known names like Andrei Sakharov, Yuri Orlov and Natan Shcharansky, as well as at least 100 lesser known names such as Victor Brailovsky and Mikhail Kazachkov. Most, if not all of you, probably are aware: that the human rights organization SOS took its name from Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky; that Orlov now is an APS Fellow and a member of the Cornell physics department; and that Shcharansky now is a member of the Israeli Knesset. Most of you probably don’t know: that Brailovsky was a computer scientist who, after losing his job in 1972 because he had applied for emigration to Israel, helped organize the Moscow refusnik Seminar on Collective Phenomena; or that in 1980 he was sentenced to five years internal exile in Siberia for defaming the Soviet state. I would be very surprised if any of you know anything about Kazachkov, who still was in his early twenties when I met him during a 1972 visit to Leningrad. Kazachkov’s astounding ability to converse with me in almost flawlessly colloquial American English reflected his intense desire to come to the United States, which he repeatedly asked me to help him accomplish. In 1975 Kazachkov received a 15 year prison sentence for allegedly seeking to reveal secrets about his Ioffe Institute to Americans like me, an obviously trumped-up charge which doubtless stemmed from Kazachkov’s openly expressed disenchantment with Soviet life. I add that it is my impression that almost all the scientists who were supported by small committee letters were very grateful, although I have no hard statistics to fall back on
As the 1980s drew to a close more and more previously persecuted Soviet scientists were released from prison and/or permitted to emigrate, with the result that the number of Soviet scientists requiring and /or actually receiving small committee support rapidly began to decrease. For instance in 1987, though the committee membership had grown to 256 from its 1985 magnitude of 167, the number of small committees was only 77, a decrease from the 1985 number 84. Moreover as the number of small committees serving persecuted Soviet scientists decreased, the number of small committees serving persecuted scientists of other nations slowly began to increase, reflecting the growing awareness, among the APS membership, of human rights abuses worldwide. Thus in 1989, when the number of small committees had fallen to 62, two of those committees were supporting the Palestinian physicists Sami Kilani and Salman Salman, and a third was supporting the Cuban physicist Jorge Molina.
These just discussed small committee trends were accelerated by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre which greatly raised APS membership awareness of Chinese human rights violations, as well as by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Accordingly, of the 12 new small committees started between November 1989 and March 1990, six were for Chinese physicists and another for a Palestinian physicist; only five of these twelve new committees were for refusniks. Indeed of the ten aforementioned small committees still existing in the year 2000, shortly before the small committee program was dissolved, only a single committee was devoted to a scientist victimized by the former Soviet Union or by one of its daughter republics. The other nine committees were supporting: two Cuban scientists; two Chinese scientists; a Vietnamese; a Palestinian; an Israeli; a scientist from Myanmar; and an American. Although the vast numbers of scientists oppressed by the USSR during the 1970s and 1980s inevitably caused CIFS to concentrate on aiding Soviet scientists during those decades, from its earliest years CIFS and the APS were attentive to human rights abuses in all nations, including the United States itself, with a total disregard of whether those nations were politically aligned against or with the United States.
In 1980 CIFS’ actions during its first year as an APS Bylaws committee included a letter to the Director of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory concerning the Lab’s disciplinary notice to Laboratory physicist Hugh DeWitt, seemingly solely because DeWitt had submitted affidavits opposing the government’s attempt to suppress publication by the Progressive Magazine of an article on the H-bomb; apparently it was undisputed that DeWitt’s affidavits, as well as the Progressive article itself, were based entirely on sources in the open literature. [DeWitt, who later served as CIFS Chair for the year 2000, has given me permission to use his name. He also has permitted me to tell you he is convinced the CIFS letter was an important factor in the Lab’s eventual decision not to actually take any disciplinary action against him. ]
The next topic is that of APS letters protesting human rights abuses, the second of my six subheadings; remember I now am excluding any letters written by small committees. During the less than thirty years of CIFS’ existence probably several hundred human rights letters have been written (I haven’t counted), many by an APS President at CIFS’ urging, many others by a CIFS Chair with the President’s permission. For the average American, as well as for the APS membership, such letter writing on APS stationery probably has constituted the Society’s most widely publicized human rights activity.
Here is a very limited sampling of such letters: During 1977, only a short time after CIFS had been created as a subcommittee of POPA, actions taken by APS President George Pake included letters from him: to the President of Argentina and to Argentine bishops concerning the fate of several disappeared scientists; to President Marcos concerning the imprisoned Philippine physicist Roger Posadas; and to President Ceaucescu concerning two Roumanian physicists whose freedom to pursue their profession had been restricted. Letters after CIFS had been established as an independent Committee included: in 1980, protesting the U.S. government’s refusal to allow Soviet scientists to attend an unclassified conference organized by the American Vacuum Society; in 1983, protesting Israel’s refusal to permit Palestinian physicists to teach in West Bank universities unless they signed a commitment against “terrorist activities”; in 1983 and 1984, asking UNESCO to investigate and redress Soviet violations of Orlov’s human rights; in 1987, protesting the Chilean government’s firing of physicist Carlos Infante and other University of Chile faculty; in 1988, well before Fang took refuge in the U.S. Embassy, protesting the Chinese government’s refusal to permit Fang to travel to the U.S.; in 1993, inquiring about several professors who were dismissed from Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa University for speaking out about a brutal suppression of a student demonstration; and in 2000, decrying U.S. imprisonment of Los Alamos researcher Wen Ho Lee without bail.
Proceeding now to those four other APS human rights activity:
(i) Scheduling sessions on human rights subjects at APS meetings A notable example is the 1981 Annual Meeting in New York, where the Forum on Physics and Society sponsored a CIFS-organized session featuring talks: by an exiled Argentine newspaper editor; by a member of Moscow Helsinki Watch who had just emigrated to this country; and by Congressman George Brown of the House Subcommittee on Science, Research and Technology. Congressman Brown’s talk, titled “Science, technology and human rights,” quoted Sakharov (who already had been exiled to Gorky), and all in all was a marvelous speech. It was published in the March 1981 Physics Today, and is very much worth reading even now.
(ii) Offering free APS membership and/or journal subscriptions to victimized physicists. This program began in 1979. By 1983 the program had become so expensive that the APS decided to regularly approve half-member rates only. These half-cost subscriptions were made available not only to victimized physicists, however, but also to most third-world physicists and libraries. Moreover unquestionably oppressed scientists continued to receive free subscriptions, via an APS-publicized program of seeking membership donations for such subscriptions. In 1985, for example, there were thirty free memberships of this very special sort. Early recipients of such free Physical Review subscriptions were: Brailovsky’s aforementioned refusnik seminar; and Yuri Orlov, though he then still was serving his 1978 twelve year prison sentence, apparently for nothing more than having organized a Moscow Chapter of Helsinki Watch.
(iii) Initiating and/or writing articles describing APS human rights activities, in Physics Today and other publications. In addition to Physics Today’s publication of Congressman Brown’s talk, there were other such articles on human rights subjects including (and I am listing only a very partial sample): A January 1981 article titled “Soviet repression of dissidents,” featuring a photograph of Brailovsky and quoting the views of Kurt Gottfried, the 1980 CIFS Chair; a July 1985 article describing CIFS activities, with a half page devoted to the views of Tom Stix, the 1985 CIFS Chair; and a September 1989 article detailing CIFS’ activities on behalf of Tayseer Aruri, a West Bank Palestinian physicist imprisoned by Israel and threatened with deportation.
(iv) Sharing information and otherwise cooperating with non-APS groups seeking to defend human rights. For instance, at quite a number of past APS meetings CIFS has arranged for the Committee of Concerned Scientists (CCS) to set up a table where APS members could sign petitions on behalf of various oppressed scientists selected by CCS. It was CIFS-furnished information about the exaggerations of the government testimony against Wen Ho Lee that convinced Amnesty International to write Judge Parker supporting Lee. Another rather unusual illustration of cooperative activity was my trip to the Soviet Union in 1981 under the joint sponsorship of the APS and various Councils for Soviet Jewry, with the express purposes of: visiting with refusniks in Moscow and Leningrad; giving many of them gifts and publications furnished me by my sponsors; and reporting back to the APS and the Councils about the circumstances of various refusniks whose names I had been given, by CIFS and/or the Soviet Councils. I actually met and reported on as many as 40 refusniks. I won’t say anything more about this trip except that possession of state secrets was the Soviet authorities’ most common reason for refusing permission for a refusnik to emigrate. Therefore you may be interested in learning that one such refusnik, Lev Blitshtein, was not a scientist but instead had worked in a sausage factory.
I want to emphasize that a significant fraction of the scientists whose human rights we have defended have themselves been physicists; this is a remarkable observation, especially considering the small percentage of physicists in any nation’s population, There really does seem to be something in the culture of our profession, in our insistence on learning how nature truly functions, in our readiness to honor all those who advance this quest no matter what their nationality or the color of their skin, that makes physicists unusually reluctant to quietly accept misuses of state power. Sakharov, Orlov, Galileo, all surely knew that their protests were unlikely to deter their respective political leaders. As physicists, therefore, we must take great pride not only in our Physical Society’s defense of human rights, but also in the inspiring fact that so many of the scientists the APS defended have been physicists willing to take actions which can remind future generations of one of the glories of our species, namely that no matter how overwhelming the state power, some humans will refuse to be cowed.
Edward Gerjuoy
Department of Physics, University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel. (412)624-2737 office, (412)243-5774 home, (412)624-9163 fax
gerjuoy+@pitt.edu
Einstein, Social Responsibility of Physicists and Human Rights in China
Li-Zhi Fang
(Adapted from paper given at FPS Session, APS Meeting March 2005 )
Albert Einstein first became known in China during the period of the May Fourth Movement (1917-1921), which was the first pro-democracy student moment in Beijing. Einstein had been widely respected as a scientific hero who had revolutionized science and our understanding of the universe. During his short visit to Shanghai in 1922-23, he delivered a lecture on relativity on the New Year’s Day of 1923[1]. When he went sightseeing in the old city of Shanghai, Chinese students recognized him, carried him on their shoulders, and paraded.
Einstein gained Chinese admiration not only because of his scientific achievements, but also because of his constant concern about the cases of injustice, suppression, and human rights abuses in China. In 1931, the Japanese army invaded and occupied three provinces in Northeast China. Einstein urged all nations to impose economic sanction on Japan. In October 1932, Chen Duxiu, the former dean of the College of Humanities of Beijing University, was arrested. Together with Bertrand Russell, Einstein telegraphed Chinese military authorities and asked for Chen’s release. That was the first time that Chinese scholars received human rights support from international intellectual circles. Again, in March 1937, seven intellectuals who advocated resistance towards the Japanese invasion were arrested. Einstein, together with sixteen American intellectual elites, telegraphed the Chinese government and demanded its respect for the freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly.
The strong sense of social responsibility shown by Einstein is an illustrious role model for Chinese intellectuals, especially for physicists, who advocate the universal principle of human rights. In 1937, the Chinese edition of Einstein’s “Mein Weltbild” (“The World as I See It”) was published. It shows that Einstein devoted his energy against the Nazis. The words “the state should be our servant, we should not be slaves of the state”[2] resonated with many young Chinese, who were facing a crisis similar to that of anti-democratic Fascism due to the full-scale invasion from Japan. For instance, Professor Xu Liangying, a student of Zhejinag University at that time, said that the book “opened up my vision, my mind, my heart and guided me into serious thinking of many fundamental questions in life”[3]. He always carried that book as the whole university withdrew and fled from the war.
Einstein’s ideas and opinions on society and politics were not tolerated by the Communists. His words attacking autocratic system were fully banned in Mao Zedong’s regime (1949-1976). Pacifism and humanitarianism were also labeled as “Reactionary Bourgeois Class” in nature. During the chaotic period of the culture revolution (1966-1976), there was even a movement specially targeted at Einstein and relativity. In 1970, the communist authorities labeled Einstein as “the most powerful reactionary bourgeois academic authority in the realm of natural science in this century”[4], and tried to convene a congress of 10,000 people to criticize Einstein. However, most Chinese physicists boycotted the criticism of Einstein. Professor Zhou Peiyuan, who spent one year (1937) in the Institute for Advanced Study with Einstein, refused to join the criticism of Einstein. Professor Zhou Tongqing (PhD, 1932, Princeton University) was charged with resisting the criticism, and was denounced at public criticism sessions.
After the Cultural Revolution, Einstein and his relativity were celebrated at the centennial anniversary of Einstein’s birthday. The set of three volumes “The Collected Works of Einstein”, edited by Professors Xu Liangying, Fan Dainian, and Li Baoheng, was published on 1976-79. These volumes had a strong impact on the democracy movement in China. During the Democracy Wall Movement in Beijing (1979-1980), one could read the following statements by Einstein on the Democracy Wall.
“A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured ?”[5]
The person who posted this statement on the Wall was finally sent to prison for 15 years (1979-1993). In the 1989 Tiananmen movement, one particular quote from Einstein was often heard: “My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.”[5] is one of Einstein’s phrases often being quoted. This probably is one of the reasons that among the 21 most wanted students of Tiananmem, 6 were physics majors. Actually, physics students have been deeply involved in all movements of pursuing democracy and freedom. In 1950s, about 10% of the physics students of Beijing University were sentenced to hard labor in the so-called “anti-rightist” campaign.
On Feb. 6, 2005, the Chinese government made public a list of 51 political prisoners who have been granted sentence reductions or are being considered for early release. We know that there is still imprisonment of scientists, such as
1. biologist Yan Jun, who had been given a two-year prison sentence on December 8th of 2003. Yan Jun had written essays on behalf of the students arrested during the Tiananmen Square incident.
2. . geophysicist Yang Zili, who had been given an eight-year prison sentence on November 10, 2003; he founded a discussion group on Chinese political reform, and was charged with inciting subversion of state power.
With this background, we should not forget the social responsibility of physicists as Einstein emphasized “For long periods of time, I have always publicly expressed my opinions on the very bad and unfortunate conditions in the society. Silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity” [6].
[1] Danian Hu, China and Albert Einstein, Harvard Press, 2005
[2] A. Einstein, The World As I See It, Covici Friede, 1934,
[3] Xu Liangying, Written speech at AAAS meeting on 1995.
[4] Shanghai Science Criticism Group, 1970
[5] A. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, Wings Books, 1954
[6] A. Einstein, Einstein on Peace, Simon and Schuster, 1960
Li-Zhi Fang
Physics Department, University of Arizona
fanglz@physics.arizon.edu
APS HOME
Physicists and the Eternal Struggle for Human Rights
by Andrew M. Sessler
I would like to tell you about the work we did on behalf of scientists from the former Soviet Union from 1977 to 1986, for our experiences then, and our actions then, are very relevant to the present. For younger people it may serve as an example, showing how an active research physicist sacrificed a paper or two, but still believes that the time was more than well-spent.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man.” That is something I, too, have long believed. When I saw what was happening in the now-former Soviet Union in 1977, I was so outraged that I couldn’t help becoming active. Along with other concerned colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, I formed an international organization called Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov, Sharansky (SOS). Our focus was on these three scientists, but our goal was to improve the situation in the Soviet Union for many more, by making their names household words and raising awareness of their predicaments.
The best known was Andrei Sakharov, a physicist known as the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, and one of the first to realize the dangers of atmospheric atomic tests. As a result, he was instrumental in developing the Partial Test Ban Treaty between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in 1963, and was awarded the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize. However, his efforts on behalf of peace drew the wrath and persecution of Soviet officials, and he suffered repeated arrests and eventual exile to Gorky as a result of his protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Yuri Orlov, an accelerator physicist, was a supporter of Sakharov and formed the first Helsinki Watch Group in 1976, designed to monitor the progress on human rights made by nations that had signed the 1975 Helsinki Accords. After nearly a decade of imprisonment for his actions, he was released and sent to the U.S. in September 1986. Natan Sharansky was a little-known Jewish computer expert whose wife left the Soviet Union the day after their marriage in 1974. He was imprisoned four years later, and was finally released in a prisoner exchange in January 1986.
The first major public initiative of SOS was in July 1978, during Sharansky’s trial in Moscow. We invited his wife, Avital, then living in Israel, to come to the U.S. and meet with scientists around the country to galvanize support for her husband. Since SOS had no funding, we charged the expenses to our personal credit cards, hoping to eventually be reimbursed by donations from our colleagues. Locally, we organized a highly successful rally on the Berkeley campus, featuring Avital Sharansky and folk singer Joan Baez, with more than 5,000 people in attendance.
Spurred on by the enthusiastic response to our first venture, we embarked on a moratorium on scientific exchange between individual American scientists and the Soviet Union, although with much misgiving and discussion, since it is so against the scientific tradition. We viewed this as a protest of the blatant misrepresentation of our Soviet colleagues by the Soviet authorities, and felt it would be effective in securing the release of Orlov and Sharansky, since the Soviets clearly needed international scientific cooperation to achieve and maintain first-rate science and technology. In an action unprecedented during peacetime, more than 2,400 American scientists signed the moratorium pledges.
Reaction from the Soviet Union was swift and strong. Within weeks we had a smuggled letter from Sakharov and Naum Meiman, written on behalf of many dissidents, strongly praising our actions. At the same time, we were denounced in the Soviet media, both on Moscow radio news and in Pravda.
The 1980 invasion of Afghanistan brought further repression of human rights, and in response, SOS organized a worldwide moratorium of scientific exchange, resulting in 7,900 scientists in 44 countries committing themselves on behalf of their beleaguered Soviet colleagues. We worked actively to change the venue of international conferences scheduled for the Soviet Union, and asked American scientists not to attend such meetings. We also adopted the strategy of publicly protesting visits to the U.S. of prominent Soviet scientists who had led campaigns of vilification against Sakharov and other dissidents. And when Elena Bonner was denied permission in 1984 to travel to the West for medical purposes, we arranged a hostage exchange program, recruiting 55 reputable Western scientists to travel to the U.S.S.R. as “good-faith witnesses” to guarantee that Mrs. Bonner’s trip would be solely for medical purposes.
With the eventual releases of Sakharov, Orlov, and Sharansky, SOS accomplished its goals and went out of existence, but forms of tyranny are still practiced against people all over the world, and other organizations still exist to combat it. The American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences both have committees devoted to human rights issues, along with the APS Committee on the International Freedom of Scientists (CIFS), the Committee of Concerned Scientists, and the Campaigns for Human Rights. There are also non-scientific organizations such as Asia Watch, the Committee to End the Chinese Gulag, and Amnesty International.
It is often said that the situation today is very different and much more complicated than when the SOS was active. But is that really true? I don’t think so. Certainly human rights activities should include many countries, but this was just as true years ago. For instance, in the early 1980s, CIFS was actively addressing problems in Turkey, Chile, and Argentina. Today, there are many scientists suffering in China, including physics graduate student Liu Gang, tortured in prison; Xu Liangying, a historian of physics under house arrest; and Wang Kuanbao, a physics student partly crushed under a tank in Tienneman Square and now denied further study by the Chinese authorities. How many cases do you need to become as active as we in SOS were?
CIFS has been active since 1980 and has protested every one of the cases mentioned above. Its current activities are impressively multifold. In the last year alone, the committee has been involved with dozens of individual cases in 15 different countries, ranging from a physics professor in Uzbekistan confined to a labor colony because of his political views, to concern over the denial of U.S. visas for scientists from diverse countries to attend conferences in this country. But there is still plenty of work to be done.
I like to think that many physicists look up, on occasion, from their experimental apparatus or computer screen, to see that all is not well with the world, and devote some time, effort, and money to working with some of the groups mentioned above. The opportunities are there, and the need is there, for the struggle for human rights is an eternal one.
Andrew M. Sessler is a senior scientist with, and former director of, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and the first recipient of the APS Dwight Nicholson Medal for Humanitarian Service in 1994 for his work with SOS.
2008 APS April Meeting and HEDP/HEDLA Meeting
Friday–Tuesday, April 11–15, 2008; St. Louis, Missouri
Invited Speakers
…………
Xu, Liangying
Chinese Academy of
Sciences Session S6.00002 Andrei Sakharov Prize Room: Hyatt Regency St. Louis Riverfront (formerly Adam’s Mark Hotel), Promenade D
2008 APS April Meeting and HEDP/HEDLA Meeting
Friday–Tuesday, April 11–15, 2008; St. Louis, Missouri
Session S6: FPS/FHP Awards Session
1:30 PM–4:30 PM, Monday, April 14, 2008
Hyatt Regency St. Louis Riverfront (formerly Adam’s Mark Hotel), – St. Louis H
Sponsoring Units: FPS FHP
Chair: Lawrence Krauss, Case Western Reserve University
Abstract: S6.00002 : Andrei Sakharov Prize
2:06 PM–2:42 PM
Preview Abstract
Author:
Liangying Xu
(Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Ever since my youth, the writings of Einstein had always enlightened my life. However, I later began to follow Marxism and threw myself into the Chinese revolution. Yet, ironically, after the victory of the revolution I myself became a target of the revolutionary dictatorship. Started from 1962 I collected, edited and translated “Collected Works of Einstein” in the countryside. Fourteen years later the three-volume collected works were published in China, which created immense impacts to Chinese intellectuals. It was Einstein’s thoughts on human rights and democracy that awakened me. Since then I have devoted myself to the fight for human rights and to the cause of democratic enlightenment in China. My goal is to transform an autocratic China that tramples human rights into a democratic and free modern China that respects human rights.
New Prize and Award Recipients
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Browse all Prize & Award Recipients
Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics
Gerald Holton
Harvard University
For his pioneering work in the history of physics, especially on Einstein and relativity. His writing, lecturing, and leadership of major educational projects introduced history of physics to a mass audience.
Andrei Sakharov Prize
Liangying Xu
Chinese Academy of Sciences
For a lifetime’s advocacy of truth, democracy and human rights — despite surveillance and house arrest, harassment and threats, even banishment — through his writings, and publicly speaking his mind.
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北大科学史与科学哲学论坛 -> 科学史（科学史总论、中国科技史、西方科技史) -> 许良英先生获美国物理学会2008年度萨哈洛夫奖
许良英先生获美国物理学会2008年度萨哈洛夫奖
来自如下网址的消息：
https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/recipients.cfm?year=2008
2008 Andrei Sakharov Prize Recipient
Liangying Xu
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Citation:
“For a lifetime’s advocacy of truth, democracy and human rights — despite surveillance and house arrest, harassment and threats, even banishment — through his writings, and publicly speaking his mind.”
Selection Committee:
Andrew Sessler (Chair), E. Gerjuoy, Y. Orlov, J. Primack, M. Tsang
颁奖典礼程序如下：
Session S6: FPS/FHP Awards Session
1:30 PM–4:30 PM, Monday, April 14, 2008
Hyatt Regency St. Louis Riverfront (formerly Adam’s Mark Hotel), – St. Louis H
Sponsoring Units: FPS FHP
Chair: Lawrence Krauss, Case Western Reserve University
Abstract: S6.00002 : Andrei Sakharov Prize
2:06 PM–2:42 PM
Preview Abstract
Author:
Liangying Xu
(Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Ever since my youth, the writings of Einstein had always enlightened my life. However, I later began to follow Marxism and threw myself into the Chinese revolution. Yet, ironically, after the victory of the revolution I myself became a target of the revolutionary dictatorship. Started from 1962 I collected, edited and translated “Collected Works of Einstein” in the countryside. Fourteen years later the three-volume collected works were published in China, which created immense impacts to Chinese intellectuals. It was Einstein’s thoughts on human rights and democracy that awakened me. Since then I have devoted myself to the fight for human rights and to the cause of democratic enlightenment in China. My goal is to transform an autocratic China that tramples human rights into a democratic and free modern China that respects human rights.