Patricia Rife, Ph.D. - USA

Graduate School of Management and Technology
University of Maryland University College

Dr. Patricia Rife has developed peace education and communications curriculum for on-line university courses, Georgia Institute of Technology, Big Brothers & Sisters of metro Atlanta, the University of Hawaii Peace Studies Program, and has taught for over 11 universities nationwide. She is currently a Professor in the Graduate Dept. of Technology & Management, University of Maryland; author of three books including Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Boston: Birkhauser 1999), and has been an invited speaker at the Carter Center’s Peace Program; Morehouse College Science & Spirituality Week, Martin Luther King Jr. Chapel; Women in Film San Francisco; the American University-Cairo Communications Department; and business ethics programs worldwide. Her research in the Nobel Prize archives on nominations for the Nobel Prize in Physics during the 1930s has been documented in numerous articles and books on Einstein, Meitner and the discovery of nuclear fission.

"Einstein, Ethics and the Atomic Bomb: Einstein's Views on World Peace"

Albert Einstein's views on world peace were developed early in his spiritual life as a boy dedicated to understanding God's rational universe. In this talk, I trace Einstein's views and demonstrate clearly how his later ethical stand against involvement in war, his vocal position against Hitler (after being persecuted out of the Third Reich), and his active participation in committees of atomic scientists organized for peace and education after World War II, are important aspect of the 'father of relativity's' spiritual beliefs, ethical life-choices, and public actions to confront the dangers of the nuclear age.