In deepest sadness, the following message is sent to her (and our) many friends and colleagues:

Ruth Salzman Adams, of Chicago, Washington, Basalt, Colorado, and more recently San Diego, succumbed peacefully to cancer at her home on Friday evening, February 25, 2005 in the loving company of her husband of 51 years, Robert McC. Adams, daughters Gail Lorien, Beth Skinner, and Megan Adams, and grandchildren Nico and Gabi Herbst and Reese Adams-Romagnoli. Born July 25, 1923, she first entered the labor force in 1942 as recreation director in a wartime Oregon shipyard (and was terminated after organizing an interracial dance). A profoundly generous and caring person as well as a principled mover-and-shaker in many non-governmental organizations, her field of action was worldwide. Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, her edited and co-edited books include works on human migrations, the anti-ballistic missile, and contemporary China. 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; 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.

Interment of her ashes will be private. A memorial service will presently be scheduled for a later date. Ruth Adams followed her own, entirely original calling and path. We hope and expect, as she did, that others will continue to do the same.

--Bob Adams