Pugwash Officers

Jayantha Dhanapala at the Pugwash 50th anniversary workshop in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, with Gen. Romeo Dallaire, July 2007

IN October 2007, at the beginning of the 11^th Pugwash Quinquennium, a new leadership team for Pugwash was installed during the 57^th Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, held in Bari, Italy.  In the tradition of world-renowned figures such as Joseph Rotblat, the Nobel Laureate chemist, Dorothy Hodgkin, the mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah, and the agricultural scientist Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, the new President of Pugwash is Mr. Jayantha Dhanapala, former Under Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations.

Mr. Dhanapala served in his UN post from 1998 to 2003, and prior to that was Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the USA (1995-7) and to the UN Office in Geneva (1984-87).  He was President of the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and a member of both the International Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (the Blix Commission) and the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

Secretary General Paolo Cotta-Ramusino, 54th Pugwash Conference, Seoul, South Korea, October 2004

Prof. Paolo Cotta-Ramusino of Italy, professor of Mathematical (Theoretical) Physics at the University of Milan, continues as Secretary General, bringing to the task more than 25 years of active involvement in nuclear weapons and international security matters.  He has been a leader of the Italian and European movement of scientists for disarmament.

Left, Saideh Lotfian, Chair of the Pugwash Council. Right, Steven Miller, Chair of the Executive Committee.

Prof. Saideh Lotfian, professor of political science at the University of Tehran, is the Chair of the Pugwash Council.  Dr. Steven Miller, director of the International Security Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, is chair of the Pugwash Executive Committee.

Jeffrey Boutwell, Executive Director

The Executive Director of Pugwash is Dr. Jeffrey Boutwell of the United States, for many years a senior officer at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass. and a well known specialist on nuclear weapons, Middle East, and other international security issues.

Together with the Pugwash Council, a highly distinguished group of 26 internationally-respected scientists and policy figures, the Pugwash leadership will continue to bring a diversity of disciplinary and cultural perspectives to bear on major international issues that has been the trademark of Pugwash for more than five decades.