Hello I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1998 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a scientist. More than half a century ago he helped invent nuclear weapons.

He spent the rest of his life urging their destruction.

He came to Britain from Poland before the war, then joined the British and American team developing

the atomic bomb.

When he quit, alarmed at the possible consequences of his work, the CIA tried to brand him a spy.

He joined up with other eminent scientists helping to

found the Pugwash conferences on science and world affairs. He's also worked as a

professor at Bart's Hospital in London using his considerable knowledge of radiation to help find a cure for cancer.

Three years ago he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and earlier this year he was knighted at the age of 89. He is Professor Sir Joseph Rotblatt.

It's been a long time coming this recognition of your work, Professor, the Peace Prize

in the Nightwood. How surprised were you that they finally got around to you?

Well, I think if you live long enough, then everything will come to you.

In my case, it came late because what I'm working for namely the elimination of nuclear weapons

we had to wait till the end of the Cold War and this became a reality rather than a fancy.

And I think this is the reason why the Nobel Prize came to me fairly late.

You didn't get much notice of it. I mean you don't do you. It's a rather Byzantine process, isn't it, the Nobel Committee?

I knew that I've be nominated for it, but it came as a

complete surprise and actually for that particularly in 95 I was convinced that I

will not get the price because like everybody else in Britain

we knew who was going to get the price for that particular year.

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