ABSTRACT
In the immediate post-war period American arms control thought was inchoate and lacking in cohesiveness. The common denominator of all “openness” concepts was the belief in the free marketplace of ideas and the right of all peoples to self-determination. The “Open World” was an ideal world order in which freedom of information, ideas and movement would be maximized. The belief in the ideal of one world and America’s power to bring it about by example and reason separated the scientists’ concept of openness from the one accepted in official circles. The Danish physicist Niels Bohr, creator of the quantum theory of atomic structure, was the first scientist to make an official appeal to the United States Government for unfettered information flows as the international solution to the atomic era. The scientists’ movement essentially began at Chicago in early 1944 when the Metallurgical Laboratory faced imminent cutbacks in funding.
