Making Your Own Luck: A Meaningful Career From Being Open to Opportunities

Abstract

The most important work I have done in my career is to warn the world about the dangers of nuclear weapons. While the Soviet‐American nuclear arms race has ended, and the 2017 United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is on its way to ratification, there is still much more work to do. The smoke from fires ignited by nuclear weapons would block out the Sun, cooling Earth's surface. The United States and Russia can still produce a nuclear winter, killing most crops and producing a global famine. I have worked on this because I have been open to new opportunities, have used my scientific expertise to apply to important problems, and am sensitive to issues that present dangers to society. Having spent more than $20 million of the public's money on my research, I feel an obligation to warn society of dangers I discover, and focus on that communication as an intimate part of my scientific efforts. And nuclear winter research has been very good to me. It led to meeting Sherri West (my wife), Carl Sagan, and Fidel Castro; to getting my current job at Rutgers; and to being a participant in the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Taking advantage of chance encounters at the Fall American Geophysical Union Meetings has been an important factor in this tale.