Members
The Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN) has over one hundred members from eighteen countries across Asia and the Pacific, consisting of former political, diplomatic and military leaders, senior government officials, and scholars and opinion leaders. APLN aims to inform and energize public opinion, especially high-level policymakers, to take seriously the very real threats posed by nuclear weapons, and to do everything possible to achieve a world in which they are contained, diminished and eventually eliminated.
Ramamurti RAJARAMAN
Emeritus Professor of Physics at Jawaharlal Nehru University
Ramamurti Rajaraman is a prolific expert in theoretical physics and public policy in areas of nuclear energy and disarmament. He holds membership in various organizations such as International Panel on Fissile materials.
Ramamurti Rajaraman did his BSc (Hons) from St. Stephens College, Delhi University (1958), and PhD in Theoretical Physics (1963) from Cornell University, USA, under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe. After a brief postdoctoral stint at TIFR in 1963, he returned to Cornell to teach and continue research. In 1969, after spending two years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton he returned to India, working first at Delhi University (1969-76), then Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore (1976-93), finally JNU (1994- ) where he is now Emeritus Professor. He spent long sabbaticals at the Harvard University, MIT, Stanford University, CERN, University of Illinois and Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
In addition to over a hundred publications from 50 years of scientific research in theoretical physics, Professor Rajaraman has worked and written on several areas of public policy. These include Higher education, nuclear energy and disarmament. Since the 1998 nuclear tests in S. Asia, he has been engaged full time on various aspects of nuclear arms control. His work covers nuclear weapon accidents, civil defense, India’s nuclear doctrine, minimal deterrence and anti-missile and early warning systems. In this work he greatly benefitted from spending every summer for a decade at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security doing research on Arms control issues in S Asia. He has analyzed in detail the Indo-US nuclear Agreement and its impact on both India's civilian nuclear program as well as its nuclear arsenal.
He is a Founding Member and past co-Chairman of the International Panel on Fissile materials, a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, of the Council of the Pugwash Conference on Science & World Affairs, of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network, of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Mitigation of Terrorist Acts, World Federation of Scientists, Erice, Italy, of the Editorial Board of “Science and Global Security”, (Taylor & Francis publishers, USA) and of the Board of Governors, Centre for Developing Societies, New Delhi.
He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and of the Indian National Science Academy where he was a past Vice President.
Before getting involved in nuclear policy work, his research in physics during the period 1962-2002 had covered, among other areas, nuclear many-body theory, high-energy physics and Quantum Field Theory, quantum Solitons, anomalous gauge theories, Fractional Charge in polymers physics and in quantum Hall systems.
Full information on Professor Rajaraman’s work and activities is available on his website: www.jnu.ac.in/faculty/rajaraman/