The Oslo Conference

Group portrait of participants at the Oslo Conference. 1961.

[Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Oslo Conference. Part 2 of 2]

In early spring of 1961, Linus Pauling and his wife Ava Helen, along with a committed group of friends and volunteers, were busy preparing for their conference against the spread of nuclear weapons, scheduled to take place in Oslo, Norway, from May 2-7. As practical necessities for the conference such as travel and lodging were gradually accounted for, an expressed priority for Pauling and other planners was the need to shape perceptions of the event with greater heed to its larger political context. In their correspondence, the planning group continually stressed that the conference itself was to be non-political, since, in Pauling’s words, “the spread of nuclear weapons is a non-political problem, really a problem of danger to humanity and civilization as a whole.”

The list of individuals invited to the event was thoughtfully organized in order to limit potential (and anticipated) claims of politicization by critics of non-proliferation. The title of the event, the “Conference to Study the Problem of the Possible Spread of Nuclear Weapons to More Nations or Groups of Nations,” was likewise crafted with diligent care and focus, albeit without regard to practical length.  In time, however, to conference planners, attendees and future references, the gathering would simply be known as the “Oslo Conference.”

Shortly before the conference was to take place, the Paulings and their associates received word from the Norwegian Nobel Committee that permission had been granted to hold their event at the Norwegian Nobel Institute. The general plan for the conference entailed studying the spread of nuclear weapons as a problem over several days of seminar-style gatherings, and then to form a scholarly statement about the problem which would be issued to the public. No organizations were allowed to directly sponsor the conference – another safeguard to repel claims of politicization – and attendees were advised that they had been selected as participants because of their expertise, knowledge and experience, rather than their professional positions, status or affiliations.

In the run-up to Oslo, a number of people wrote to the conference planners asking whether or not the event would be open to the public, as many wished to witness the discussions and conference discourse, even if they were barred from participating directly. Though Pauling and other planners were grateful for the interest expressed in such inquiries, they ultimately decided to hold a closed conference. According to Pauling, the meetings were to be kept private so that

Participants might have the greatest possible freedom to discuss the important questions that will be taken up, from every point of view, and to reach some conclusions on which they could all agree, without being hindered by public knowledge of preliminary and perhaps contradictory statements made in the course of discussion.

Pauling let it be known to interested parties that public participation would take place after the drafting of the statement, most likely at the University of Oslo, and following the culmination of the conference. But even with these pronouncements, Pauling was compelled during the conference to reiterate this point. Though spouses of participants were allowed to attend, several attendees brought friends during the first day of the conference and were rebuked accordingly.

Just as the image of the conference was carefully shaped in the weeks and months preceding it, so too were the themes and perspectives that were planned to guide the event’s proceedings. Though they had around five days to do so, creation of the final conference statement was carefully planned from the outset of the gathering. The process was structured such that suggestions for material that participants wanted to see incorporated into a preliminary draft of the conference statement were to be given to members of a Drafting Committee at the beginning of the conference. After this was done, there were to be several days of presentations and discussion, during which an initial draft of the conference statement would be composed and reviewed. The final day of the conference was set aside for concluding remarks, discussion, last minute changes, and voting for approval or rejection of the final statement.

A segment of the crowd gathered for the Oslo demonstration, May 1961.

As it turned out, the statement was approved unanimously by the conference-goers on May 7th, and presented that evening to a gathering of the public at the University of Oslo. After reading the statement, those present conducted a peaceful demonstration through the streets of Oslo in recognition of the collective effort toward the furtherance of world peace.

While the statement discusses several themes relating to the issue of disarmament from various perspectives, the final statement lists five points meant to synthesize the final conclusions of the conference:

1. Each addition to the numbers of nations armed with nuclear weapons drives its neighbors toward acquiring similar arms.
2. As nuclear weapons pass into more hands, the chance increases that a major war will be started by some human error or technical accident.
3. The spread to more nations increases the chance of deliberate initiation of nuclear war.
4. Increase in the number of nuclear powers would further increase the difficulty of achieving disarmament.
5. After it obtains nuclear weapons, a nation becomes a more likely target in any nuclear war.

"Oslo Statement." May 7, 1961.

Shortly after returning to the United States, Pauling appeared at the Conference of Greater New York Peace Groups, and discussed the results of the Oslo Conference in front of a large audience at Carnegie Hall. He stressed the wide range of opinions and perspectives brought forth by each conference participant, and the difficulties encountered and overcome in achieving unanimous approval of the statement. While Pauling strongly supported the results of the conference, as well as the feasibility of the final statement’s goals and recommendations, he clarified that achieving these goals would easily require ten years, but likely more. Through all his idealism, Pauling seems not to have suffered from delusions about the difficulty of this task, reminding his audience that “we must work; but we have a hard job!”

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Pauling’s words turned out to be prescient as, in the wake of the conference, a number of developments took place that infuriated him and temporarily dampened his resolve. For one, as part of more complicated international political maneuverings, the Soviet Union announced plans to resume testing of nuclear weapons, followed shortly thereafter by similar stated intentions from the United States. Pauling subsequently set about writing letters to Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy, imploring them not to resume testing; he received no answer from the Kennedy administration, and was delivered a largely apologetic reply from Khrushchev. In his letter to Pauling, Khrushchev suggested that the decision to resume testing was a painful one, but necessary due to the movement into European waters of American Polaris submarines and nuclear missiles.

Pauling became nearly distraught when the Soviet government detonated a 50-megaton atomic bomb, an action that Pauling had implored, with particular emphasis, the Soviet government not to pursue. The fallout from such an explosion, Pauling reasoned,

…could cause damage to the pool of human germ plasm such that during coming generations, several tens of thousands of children would be born with gross physical or mental defect, who would be normal if the bomb test were not carried out.

After the detonation of the 50-megaton bomb, followed by a number of additional less-substantial but still extremely powerful explosions, Pauling began criticizing the Soviet Union at a level that was virtually unparalleled in his previous approach to internationally oriented dialogue. The U.S. also was not spared from similar denunciations by Pauling, but he was particularly disturbed by the magnitude of the Soviet endeavor after years of seemingly productive discussions towards disarmament in Geneva.

Though Pauling became extremely disillusioned by the decision of both nations to resume testing, he was eventually rewarded for his sustained efforts. In 1963, following resumed negotiations, the United States and Soviet Union signed a partial test ban treaty that halted the testing of nuclear weapons in the ocean, in space and in the atmosphere. Pauling’s impact on this development was formally recognized several weeks later when he received word that he had been chosen as recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

A New Petition and Preparations for Oslo

Linus Pauling holding a copy of the 1961 appeal.

[Ed Note: May 2011 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Oslo Conference Against the Spread of Nuclear Weapons.  The is Part 1 of a two part series devoted to the Oslo Conference.]

“Can there be any rational goal other than general and complete disarmament? Is it reasonable to plan to attempt to survive the catastrophe of megaton war? Is it sensible or even possible to entertain the idea of making international agreements to abolish megaton weapons and to fight ‘limited’ wars with only conventional or kiloton weapons? Would the world be safe under a permanent ‘balance of terror,’ reached by international agreement about ‘arms control’ rather than disarmament – two great arrays of rockets, with megaton warheads, ever poised, ready to achieve the destruction of their allotted halves of the world, the death of their allotted hundreds of millions of human beings?”

- Linus Pauling. Opening Address, Conference Against the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, Oslo, Norway, May 2, 1961.

At the beginning of 1961, Linus Pauling was pictured on the cover of Time magazine, one of several U.S. scientists collectively chosen as Time’s men of the year. John F. Kennedy had just defeated Richard Nixon for the U.S. presidency, and only three months had passed since Pauling’s final confrontation with Senator Thomas Dodd and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

Pauling’s troubles with SISS had centered largely on his efforts, three years prior, to circulate an international petition to halt the testing of nuclear weapons, a document that was eventually submitted to the United Nations with the signatures of around 11,000 of the world’s scientists. The petition contributed substantial momentum to a temporary international test ban treaty signed by the U.S. and Soviet Union, which was followed by approximately three years of seemingly productive international negotiations in Geneva, Switerland, the focus of which was the negation of nuclear testing.

While Pauling felt that great progress had been made following the November 1958 decision to temporarily halt nuclear weapons tests, he grew uneasy with the rise of new developments around the world.  In particular, Pauling was alarmed by what he saw as a renewed and calculated domestic campaign to resume atomic testing in the United States. Likewise, in the aftermath of the test-detonation of a nuclear weapon by the government of France, serious discussions about the sharing of U.S. nuclear weapons with NATO nations began to hasten in earnest.

Around the beginning of January 1961, Pauling and his wife Ava Helen decided – as Linus put it in a later speech – to “take whatever action [they], as individual human beings, could take toward the achievement of permanent and true peace in the world.” Because of the success that the couple had enjoyed with their first international petition three years prior, the Paulings felt that another attempt was merited, and set about writing and circulating a second petition. This document, an “Appeal to Stop the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,” was initially addressed to both the United Nations and to the individual governments of the world.  It warned

The world is now in great danger. A cataclysmic nuclear war might break out as the result of some terrible accident or of an explosive deterioration in international relations such that even the wisest national leaders would be unable to avert the catastrophe. Universal disarmament has now become the essential basis for life and liberty for all people.

The new petition focused on the increased difficulty of effecting universal disarmament, as new nations or groups of nations came into possession of nuclear weapons. The document likewise urged the era’s nuclear powers to reject the transfer of nuclear weapons to other nations or political alliances, and encouraged non-nuclear nations to voluntarily refrain from seeking them. Lastly, the petition called upon all nations, whether they possessed nuclear weapons or not, to “increase their efforts to achieve total and universal disarmament with a system of international controls and inspection such as to insure to the greatest possible extent the safety of all nations and all people.”

"An Appeal to Stop the Spread of Nuclear Weapons." January 15, 1961.

The new petition was sent out to scientists that had supported the previous effort, and Pauling promptly received over 700 responses within one month, including replies from thirty-eight Nobel Prize winners and 110 members of the National Academy of Sciences. Pauling turned over his collection of responses to Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations, on February 16th, 1961.

While the Paulings were happy with the initial response to their appeal, they sought more support from people worldwide, using a series of subsequent press releases to spread the word. The petition was printed in various newspapers around the country and circulated among several nations around the world. While the document was initially signed by 700 people from 40 different nations, with renewed efforts, the the total number of signatories quickly began to approach 10,000.

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During the writing and initial circulation stages of the 1961 appeal, the Paulings admitted to harboring many peace- and disarmament-related questions that they wished to see considered with more vigor. In light of their experiences with the Pugwash Conferences, the couple decided that non-proliferation was a topic worthy of its own event, ideally one where “scientists and other informed people from many countries [would] meet to study and analyze some aspects of the present great world problem.”  In actuality though, Pauling and his wife thought of their efforts as a supplement to the Pugwash meetings, rather than a gathering of its own.

Geneva was the first city considered as an ideal location to hold the conference, but after some thought the Paulings decided that it was more of a place for negotiations between nations, and eventually settled on Oslo, Norway instead. Oslo maintained worldwide significance as an International City of Peace, home to the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1901 and the Norwegian Nobel Institute since 1905.  Moreover, a very important additional determinant for the location was the substantial amount of practical support that was extended to the Paulings in advance by their friend, Professor Otto Bastiansen, along with a good number of other Norwegian volunteers involved with a Norwegian group known as “the Thirteen.” As for the timing of the meeting, it fell into a convenient niche between the 6th Pugwash Conference in Moscow and the 7th Pugwash Conference in the U.S.  Even more importantly, the conference was set to culminate on the day before a major NATO meeting was to take place in Geneva.

Otto Bastiansen. Portrait by H. Stenstadvold / BONO 2010

The NATO meeting, a spring gathering of the Ministerial Council lasting from May 8 to 10, was the first meeting directed by a new Secretary-General of NATO, Dirk U. Stikker. The principle theme of the meeting was reportedly “the general awareness of the global character of the communist threat,” but particular focus was given over to aid for poorer nations, and the potential transfer of five Polaris nuclear missile submarines and eighty Polaris nuclear warheads to NATO forces in Europe. A final goal of the meeting was to address efforts to achieve disarmament with the Soviet Union, in particular the need to ensure policy consistency among NATO allies. While all topics were generally relevant to their aims, it was this last goal in particular that Pauling and his associates hoped to influence with their conference in Oslo.

After several weeks of intense planning and coordination, the Paulings managed to find twenty-five individuals from fifteen different countries who were willing to help sponsor the event and cover most expenses. As the conference drew near, planners extended invitations to scientists and other people with applicable special knowledge – in all, sixty scientists (both physical and social) from fifteen nations agreed to attend.

Pauling110

Linus Pauling. Lecturing at the Concepts of Chemical Bonding Seminar, Oslo University, Oslo, Norway. 1982.

Today marks the 110th anniversary of Linus Pauling’s birth, which occurred in Portland, Oregon on February 28, 1901. As has become tradition on the Pauling Blog, we are celebrating this occasion by looking back at Pauling’s life in increments of twenty-five years.

1911

At the tender age of ten, young Linus was already at a crossroads in his life. First and foremost, his father Herman had died of a perforated ulcer the previous summer, thus throwing the Pauling family into something akin to chaos. Herman was a pharmacist and businessman of middling success, and his death was a source of major financial concern for his widow Isabelle and their three children, Linus, Pauline (age 9) and Lucile (age 7). From this point on, Linus’s childhood was certainly informed, if not dominated, by the continual need to contribute to the household income. His mother’s only asset of consequence was the family home, which she boarded out on a regular basis in an attempt to make ends meet. But as time passed and Belle’s own health faded, her only son was frequently called upon to assist with the family finances, leading Linus to assume any number of odd jobs, from delivery boy to film projectionist to grocery clerk.

Young Linus, ca. 1910s.

It was at this same time that the boy’s interest in science was beginning to flower. The previous year Herman had written a letter to the Portland Oregonian newspaper indicating that his son was a “great reader” keenly interested in ancient history and the natural sciences. In 1911 Pauling’s scientific impulses continued to flourish in the form of an insect collection that he maintained and classified using books checked out from the Portland library. Not long after, as with many scientists of his generation, Linus would develop an interest in minerals and begin compiling a personal collection of classified stones that he found.

1936

By the age of thirty-five, Pauling had already established himself as among the world’s pre-eminent structural chemists and was well on his way to making a major impact in the biological sciences. In 1936 Pauling met Karl Landsteiner of the Rockefeller Institute, a Nobel laureate researcher best known at the time for having determined the existence of different blood types in human beings. In their initial meeting, Pauling and Landsteiner discussed Landsteiner’s program of research in immunology, a conversation that would lead to a fruitful collaboration between the two scientists. Importantly, his interactions with Landsteiner would lead Pauling to think about and publish important work on the specificity of serological reactions, in particular the relationship between antibodies and antigens in the human body.

Linus Pauling, 1936.

The year also bore witness to a major change at the California Institute of Technology: in June, Arthur Amos Noyes died. Noyes had served as chairman of the Caltech Chemistry Division for some twenty-seven years and was among the best known chemists of his era. His death ushered a power vacuum within the academic administration at Caltech, by then an emerging force in scientific research. Three of Pauling’s colleagues cautiously recommended to Caltech president Robert Millikan that Pauling be installed as interim chair of the department. Millikan agreed and offered the position to Pauling, but was met with refusal. At the time of the proposal,  Pauling was the object of some degree of criticism within the ranks at Caltech – certain of his peers felt him to be overly ambitious and even reckless in his pursuit of scientific advance – and the suggestion that Pauling assume division leadership was hardly unanimous. Millikan’s terms likewise did not meet with Pauling’s approval; in essence he felt that he would be burdened with more responsibility but would not gain in authority. The impasse would not last long however, as Pauling would eventually accept a new offer in April 1937 and begin a twenty-one year tenure as division chief.

1961

A busy year started off with a bang when the sixty-year-old Pauling was chosen alongside a cache of other U.S. scientists as “Men of the Year” by Time magazine. By this period in Pauling’s life his peace activism was a topic of international conversation and early in the year Linus and Ava Helen followed up their famous 1958 United Nations Bomb Test Petition with a second “Appeal to Stop the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,” issued in the wake of nuclear tests carried out by France. As a follow-up, the Paulings organized and attended a May conference held in Oslo Norway, at which the attendees (35 physical and biological scientists and 25 social scientists from around the world) issued the “Oslo Statement,” decrying nuclear proliferation and the continuation of nuclear tests.

Group photo of participants in the Oslo Conference, 1961.

While Pauling’s attentions during this period were increasingly drawn to his peace work, he did make time for innovative scientific research. Of particular note was his theory of anesthesia, published in July in the journal Science. Pauling’s idea was that anesthetic agents formed hydrate “cages” with properties similar to ice crystals. Owing to the nature of their molecular structure, these cages would impede electrical impulses in the brain, thus leading to unconsciousness. In a review article published one year later, the pharmacologist Chauncey Leake described the theory as “spectacular,” though for reasons that are still unclear it failed to gain traction with the larger scientific community.

1986

By age eighty-five, Pauling’s interests centered largely upon his continuing fascination with vitamin C. Having already published monographs focusing upon ascorbic acid’s capacity to ward of the common cold and the flu, Pauling was ready to put his thinking together into a general audience book that would discuss the path to happier and healthier lives. The result was How to Live Longer and Feel Better, a modest critical and commercial success that helped bolster the reputation and the finances of the struggling Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine.

Pauling at 85.

Many of the recommendations that Pauling made in How to Live Longer… were fairly typical of most health promotion books: a sensible diet, regular exercise and no smoking. The major exception to this moderate approach was the famed author’s stance on vitamin supplementation. In biographer Thomas Hager‘s words

Pauling was now advising between 6 and 18 grams of vitamin C per day, plus 400-16,000 IU of vitamin E (40-160 times the RDA), 25,000 IU of vitamin A (five times the RDA), and one or two ‘super B’ tablets for the B vitamins, along with a basic mineral supplement.

This staunch belief in the value of megavitamins would stay with Pauling until his death eight years later, in August 1994.