Ruth Adam's comments on the Sixth Pugwash Conference in Moscow, 1960

"Peter Kapitza stood up to welcome everybody. About halfway through his voice broke, he kept talking but the tears were coming down his face. Everybody stood up; it was literally the first time many of them had been together, since working together before the war (WWII). That created a very personal feeling about this meeting, and I think it was one of the more important meetings that Pugwash had because they were able to lay everything on the table. The big issue, of course, was the Test Ban Treaty at that time. There was a great euphoria; the kind of euphoria that we felt after the Cold War was over. Things were going to get much better; we felt that excitement in the air. It was that kind of sense of purpose that flourished in that meeting in Moscow. We could not have predicted that Khrushchev and Kennedy wouldn't like each other. We couldn't have predicted there would be a Cuban Missile Crisis. At that time, it just seemed that this group of dedicated scientists really had an opportunity now to change the world. This was 1960."