Pugwash head to honor late CU professor at symposium

Cornell's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology will hold a symposium Oct. 1 in memory of Franklin A. Long, professor emeritus of chemistry and the university's vice president for research and advanced studies from 1963 to 1969, who died Feb. 8. The symposium will be at 4 p.m. in Baker Laboratory, Room 200.

Long achieved national prominence in 1969 when he was nominated as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). But the appointment was blocked by President Richard Nixon because of Long's stated opposition to the antiballistic missile system (ABM), then a highly controversial element of U.S. nuclear defense strategy. Appropriately, the symposium is titled "The Great ABM Debate -- Then and Now."

After opening remarks by Robert Hughes, Cornell professor emeritus of chemistry, and by Dale Corson, Cornell president emeritus, a lecture on "The Role of Scientists in the 1968 ABM Debate" will be given by George Rathjens, secretary-general of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The Pugwash Conferences bring together influential scholars and public figures concerned with reducing the danger of armed conflict to discuss cooperative solutions to global problems as private individuals rather than as representatives of governments or institutions.

Rathjens is professor emeritus of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served formerly in Washington, D.C., in the departments of Defense and State, in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and on the White House staff.

Long was active in the international Pugwash movement, and at the time of his conflict with the Nixon administration had behind him a long career as a Cornell faculty member and administrator and as a U.S. government science adviser. He was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, serving under presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. Nixon later relented and offered Long the NSF directorship. But Long rejected the offer.

Long came to Cornell as a professor of chemistry in 1937, a post he held until 1979, serving as chair of the chemistry department between 1950 and 1960. He became professor emeritus of chemistry in 1979. He also was a faculty trustee on the Cornell Board of Trustees from 1956 to 1957.

From 1969 to 1973 he was director of a new Cornell academic and research program, Science, Technology and Society. Between 1969 and 1979 he held the Cornell post of Henry R. Luce Professor of Science and Society, and between 1976 and 1979 he was director of the Peace Studies Program. He served on the boards of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation and the Fund for Peace.