Leo Szilard Lectureship Award: Arguing from the Periphery

In today's societies, where the use of sophisticated and potentially dangerous technologies has become routine and where economic and political power require the constant invention and deployment of new technologies, meaningful democratization necessarily requires that people with expertise on these subjects intervene actively in the public interest, speaking truth to power as it were. There is a long history of such intervention by scientists, physicists in particular, in debates over nuclear policies in many countries around the world. This talk will explore different roles scientists have played in this contentious and disputed arena, with some recent examples from India.