Politicians, diplomats and generals around the world are currently debating the extent to which countries should be allowed to develop and maintain nuclear capabilities. Much of the debate centers around practical policy, especially concerning countries such as Iran. But the present discussions obscure a larger point about the responsibility of science in such matters.
The origins of the atomic bomb in theoretical physics are well known. The simple and elegant equation E = mc2 predicted the possibility of harnessing incredible amounts of energy from (relatively ordinary) matter.
Einstein's mathematical derivations were never intended to unleash such an extreme destructive force when they were first published in his 1905.
It was not until the beginning of the Second World War that the military implications of special relativity became apparent.
In a letter drafted by the physicist Leo Szilard and sent to President Roosevelt under Einstein's name, Szilard and Einstein warn that "extremely powerful bombs of a new type might thus be constructed."
Until this point, in the late 1930s, special relativity had been the very definition of an impractical scientific advance -- it had no known uses and no imaginable uses, whatsoever. Technology had not yet caught up to science.
The Manhattan Project itself did not begin until the end of 1941, around the time the United States officially entered the war. Less than four years later, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.
Today, there are at least seven countries with declared nuclear weapons capabilities, and several more with secret programs, or programs in development. More than 440 nuclear reactors around the world provide just under 20 percent of the world's electricity. Moreover, just recently, a launched unmanned mission to Pluto is using a small nuclear reactor to propel it across the solar system.
What lessons can be drawn from this remarkable story? Perhaps the most obvious is that science, when unhindered by politics, can develop in unpredictable and potentially fruitful directions.
The concept that science ought not to be hindered by politics is not to say that it should be entirely unregulated. Public safety comes first, and there will always be questionable research in need of oversight. But any regulation of science should be done with the future potential of scientific progress kept in mind.
Scientists themselves have the greatest responsibility for their discoveries. Most scientists are profoundly aware of this duty.
The discovery of nuclear power was an inevitable consequence of the dramatically increasing scientific understanding of the world in the first half of the 20th century.
Today, scientists have an increasingly pressured responsibility to ensure that their work is used for peaceful purposes, for the benefit of all.
Scientists and politicians need to work together, today more than at any other moment in history, to ensure that society can reap the greatest possible benefit from research. Scientists should be allowed to work and experiment to the greatest extent allowable.
