Ruth Salzman Adams

Ruth Salzman Adams (died in 2003)

"As editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists from 1961 to 1968 and from 1978 to 1983, Ms. Adams provided a forum for scientists to express their opposition to the deployment and use of nuclear weapons...

"After World War II, she worked at the University of Chicago. From 1968 to 1971, she was a consultant and research associate at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass., and she was executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois from 1971 to 1974.

"Ms. Adams, who also edited several books, joined the MacArthur Foundation in 1983, concentrating on programs that highlighted the risks posed by unconventional weapons and promoted peace and social justice.

"She is survived by her husband of 51 years, Robert McC. Adams, former provost of the University of Chicago and former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution".

"At the time of her death she was a Board member, Trust for Mutual Understanding and the Maki Foundation; and a course director and consultant to the Italian School on Disarmament and Research on Conflict (ISODARCO). Formerly she had been Program Director for Peace and International Cooperation of the John D. and Catherine T, MacArthur Foundation; and prior to that Editor, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. She was an original (1957) and continuing participant in the Pugwash International Conferences on Science and World Affairs (with a special attachment to the Student Pugwash movement). In the later decades of the Cold War she frequently had a facilitating role in maintaining the flow of policy-oriented communication and understanding on nuclear issues between senior Western and Soviet scientists.

"The breadth of her concurrent activities is suggested by the following: Former Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies; former Trustee, Rocky Mountain Institute[appointed in 1997]; former Board member, Council for a Livable World; former Council member, Federation of American Scientists; former Executive Director or the Illinois American Civil Liberties Union; former Organizing Committee and Governing Board member of the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, Kenya; former Visiting Scholar, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California, San Diego; former Board member, Women's National Forum, the Chicago Network. Her numerous awards include the Public Service Award of the Federation of American Scientists, the Adlai Stevenson Award for International Human Understanding of the United Nations Association, and the Forum on Physics and Society Award of the American Physical Society."