Ivan Supek - Public Activity

Public Activity

Supek was a proponent of total and unconditional nuclear disarmament, having already in 1944, fourteen months before the bombing of Hiroshima warned on the danger of misuse of atomic energy.

In 1946 he became a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zagreb. His main contribution to physics was the discovery of the differential equation for electrical conductivity at low temperatures. In 1950 he advocated the construction of the Ruđer Bošković institute in Zagreb and became one of its founders. He was excluded from it in 1958 due to his disagreement with the Yugoslav Federal Commission for Nuclear Energy and his unwillingness to participate in a project for building the atomic bomb (an idea Josip Broz Tito himself did not like much, and which was subsequently abandoned). After that, he stopped active research in theoretical physics and continued researching philosophy and literature.

In 1960 he was accepted into the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (since 1991 the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts) of which he was president from 1991 to 1997, and in 1968 he became the rector of the University of Zagreb, serving two terms until 1972, during the turbulent times of the Croatian Spring. In 1960 he founded the Institute for the Philosophy of Science and Peace, as a section of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. The Institute was also a center of the nuclear disarmament movement, the Pugwash Conference for Yugoslavia, of which he was one of the founders and a member of its Permanent Committee. In 1970 he initiated the establishing of the Interuniversity Centre in Dubrovnik (IUC). He was also one of the founders of the international organization World without the Bomb. After numerous disputes and arguments with the government he was interrupted in his public activity in 1971. Among other incidents, he was put on a "black list" because of his involvement in the Croatian Spring movement.

In 1976 he signed the Dubrovnik-Philadelphia Statement, with Philip Noel-Baker, Ava Helen Pauling, Linus Pauling, Aurelio Peccei and Sophia Wadai. He participated at the Philadelphia Congress of World Unity in 1976. He formulated his famous ten humanistic principles, which were more or less repeated at every later peace summit and event. He also established the International League of Humanists.