Paolo Cotta-Ramusino is the current serving Secretary General of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Nobel Peace Prize 1995). In particular he dealt, as Secretary General, with the general problems of arms control, issues of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East and with conflicts in that region, with the Iranian nuclear problems and relevant agreements, with the nuclear risks in India and Pakistan. He was, up until the year of his retirement (2018), Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Milano and Senior Researcher at the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics.
He is now teaching a course on Nuclear Weapons, Disarmament and Nuclear Proliferation at the University of Milano. He is a member of the working group “International Security and Arms Control” of the Italian National Academy of Science (Accademia dei Lincei). In 1983 he co-founded the Italian Union of Scientist for Disarmament and he is still a member of its governing body.
His research and teaching experience includes visiting positions at the University of North Carolina, CERN, and Harvard University. He received his doctorate (laurea) in physics in 1971 from the Università degli Studi di Milano.