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Death NoticePhilip Bartlett Smith1923 - 15 December 2005 Published on 23 December 2005 Current comments and reminiscences on Smith:On behalf of the Board and members of Pugwash Netherlands, I have the sad task of informing the international Pugwash community of the passing away on December, 15, 2005 of Philip Bartlett Smith. Phil was born in 1923 in the United States as an American citizen. In 1950, when the McCarthy era made it impossible for a person of his convictions to find employment, he had to leave. Phil worked in Brazil for seven years, and then moved to the Netherlands, where he spent the majority of his working life. From 1963 till his retirement in 1988 he was a Professor of Experimental Nuclear Physics at Groningen State University. Phil Smith was a Pugwashite from the early 1960s, and a member of the Pugwash Council from 1987 till 1992. He served Pugwash Netherlands as secretary, treasurer and member of the Board during the full forty years of his membership. Speaking at his funeral on December 20th, in Groningen, I compared the significance of Phil Smith for Pugwash Netherlands with that of Jo Rotblat for Pugwash International. We called him "Mr. Pugwash Netherlands". Jo and Phil both devoted half their lives to the cause of Pugwash. One of Phil's last written contributions was an obituary of Jo Rotblat, published in the INES Newsletter of September 2005, and in the Newsletter of Pugwash Netherlands. He there expressed his great admiration for the courage of Jo Rotblat, as the only scientist to leave Los Alamos before the end of the Second World War, soon after it became clear in the autumn of 1944 that Nazi Germany would never succeed in making an atomic bomb before the end of the war. He called Jo a man "who invented conscience", We take the liberty of applying these words to Phil himself. This admiration was characteristic for Phil. During his Council Membership he had disagreed many times with Rotblat and other Council Members, for instance on the value of the NPT. He dismissed the core concept of the NPT, the legal acceptance of Nuclear Weapon States as against Non - Nuclear Weapon States, of the "haves" versus the "have-nots", as an error of principle. Indeed, we must admit that Article VI has been misused for 35 years as a legal loophole to legitimate the possession of nuclear weapons. Phil had a tense relationship to his native country. He deeply rejected its power policy, not only in recent years, but also far earlier. He labelled it "The holy American Empire", with great abhorrence. As one of his sons said, he was an early "asylum seeker". Phil Smith, who around 1963 became the secretary of Pugwash Netherlands, in succession to the founder Hans Tolhoek, served on the Board till January 2003. For many years, till around 1985, he was factually the only Board member, and even in later years, when the Board grew from three till seven persons, he still remained the heart and soul of the organization. Phil withdrew from the Board in 2003, and to the surprise of many also resigned as member. In his last years he wanted to be free to speak and write unfettered on the many subjects of his concern: armament; environment and energy; poverty and world economics. To his resignation we can only say "deplore", "respect" and "understand". Phil Smith probably had greater affinity to the unyielding Bertrand Russell of earlier days than to the Pugwash Community of today. But throughout his last two years it was clear that Phil could not really live without Pugwash, nor could we forget our " Mr. Pugwash Netherlands". So we came to that last ceremony, to say farewell to our respected and beloved Philip Bartlett Smith, fighter for justice and peace. May he rest in peace. Bart van der Sijde
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