October 15, 2025
The Princeton Program on Science and Global Security (SGS) organized a United Nations First Committee side-event on October 15, 2025: “Scientists and Nuclear Weapons: Meeting Today’s Challenges.” The panel discussion was sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Austria and chaired by Ambassador Alexander Kmentt, Director of the Disarmament, Arms Control and Nonproliferation Department of the Austrian Foreign Ministry.
The First Committee is part of the United Nations General Assembly and is responsible for disarmament and international security. It deals with global challenges and threats to peace that affect the international community.
The side-event featured presentations from SGS senior scholars Frank von Hippel, Zia Mian, and Stewart Prager, as well as SGS research affiliate Leyatt Betre, on the past, present, and future possibilities of scientists’ engagement with nuclear weapons issues and multilateral efforts to address them.
The motivation for the panel was to mark the 80th anniversary of the first nuclear weapon test, the first use of a nuclear weapon in combat, and the first threat to use nuclear weapons – all of which took place in 1945 and were carried out by the United States.
The panel sought to engage the international community on the unique role of scientists in the history and politics of the nuclear age. In a handful of countries scientists have continued to invent, develop, maintain, and advance nuclear weapons in the eight decades since the US Manhattan Project brought the first atomic bombs into being. In these countries and in many others, throughout this era scientists also have argued for nuclear arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament. They have been especially important in educating governments and the public on the dangers of nuclear weapons testing and use, the consequences of nuclear war, and the opportunities to reduce and end these dangers.
Frank von Hippel, co-founder of SGS and author of “Ending the Nuclear Arms Race: A Physicist’s Quest” (2024), offered a reflection on and examples from the history of scientists’ involvement in reducing nuclear threats. These included early work by Albert Einstein and the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, the Pugwash movement, and the efforts by US and Soviet scientists to counter missile defense programs and to end nuclear testing, as well as, most recently, the role of scientists in supporting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
Stewart Prager, Chair of the steering committee for the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction, and Professor Emeritus of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, presented the Coalition’s growing outreach and education initiatives aimed at engaging physicists on nuclear weapons issues with the goal of intervening more effectively in nuclear arms control and disarmament debates and policymaking. Founded at SGS in 2019, the Physicists Coalition has organized over 170 colloquia on nuclear weapons issues at university physics departments and research centers and now has over 1700 members.
Leyatt Betre, an independent scholar and SGS Research Collaborator, presented the SGS project, “Mobilizing Scientific Communities on the Effects of Nuclear War and Nuclear Disarmament.” This initiative seeks to foster greater awareness of the role of scientific communities, especially those based in the Global South and TPNW countries, in efforts to reduce and end nuclear dangers, particularly through their contributions to developing and communicating scientific understandings of the catastrophic effects of nuclear war.
Zia Mian, Co-Director of SGS and Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Group of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, outlined some challenges for scientists when choosing to whom they should speak on nuclear weapon issues, the need to think beyond governments and officials, and the conditions under which publics listen to scientists. Mian also highlighted the August 2025 call by the TPNW Scientific Advisory Group for scientists of all countries to “work to educate each other, especially the next generation, and the public and policy makers on the risks posed by nuclear weapons arsenals and policies; and expand the role of science for disarmament, conflict resolution and peace.”