Kurt Gottfried, a physicist, author, and activist, died on August 25 at the age of 93. He cofounded the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in the 1960s and was a vocal advocate of nuclear disarmament, action on climate change, and scientist involvement in public discourse.
Gottfried was born in Vienna on May 17, 1929, to two PhD-holding chemists, according to The New York Times. The Gottfrieds’ home was invaded by Nazis during the pogrom Kristallnacht in November 1938. The family fled to Canada by way of Belgium, eventually settling in Montreal. Gottfried attended nearby McGill University and studied physics, graduating in 1952. He then went to graduate school at MIT, where he roomed with another physics student, Henry Kendall, with whom he would later establish the UCS (Kendall would also go on to win the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics). Upon earning his PhD in 1955, Gottfried married Sorel Dickstein ...
