Nobel prize winner Joseph Rotblat dies

Rotblat, who resigned from the Manhattan Project during World War II, died in his sleep in his home in London Wednesday, the Guardian reported Friday.

Born in Warsaw in 1908, he started work on nuclear weapons at Liverpool University in 1939 in Britain and was part of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M.

However, after he learned intelligence indicated the Germans were not working on a nuclear weapon, he left the effort. He returned to Britain and pursued medical physics at St. Bartholomew's hospital in London. He later co-founded the Pugwash conferences, a movement to discourage the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Rotblat and the Pugwash group won the Nobel peace prize in 1995.

"He's been an inspiration to people all over the world. He devoted his life to preventing the use, spread or existence of nuclear weapons," said Robert Hinde, chairman of Pugwash conferences in Britain and emeritus professor at Cambridge University.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International