It is most appropriate that Laue has the last word in the skit -
After that day, we talked much about the conditions for an atomic explosion. Heisenberg gave a lecture on the subject in one of the colloquia that we prisoners had arranged for ourselves. Later, during the table conversation, the version — Lesart —was developed that the German atomic physicist really had not wanted the atomic bomb, either because it was impossible to achieve it during the expected duration of the war or because they simply did not want to have it at all. The leader in these discussions was Weizsacker. I did not hear the mention of any ethical point of view. Heisenberg… was mostly silent.
None can doubt the integrity of Heisenberg as a physicist - as he withstood attacks on him as a white jew - But his position on german bomb? Germans were building a nuclear plant -----------
For me "Hitler's Nuclear Cub" came as a shock, since I had assumed integrity as a scientist guaranties integrity as a human being - heaven knows from which hubris it came from-
{My prejudices -
The only pieces of "history of physics" that I have read before this book
-history of concept of fields by Gerald Holt, focussing on Faraday mainly
-couple of articles in the proceedings of 1983 Les Houches School, one by Schweber on history of Quantum Field Theory, other by R.Jost on interaction between Maths & Physics, dealing with Gauss & Faraday.
I was aware of "Brighter than a thousand Suns" by Robert Jungk, but haven't read it.
I admire Bohr not only for his physics and Copenhagen interpretation, but also for his activism against nuclear armament}
I have the revised 2000 edition
p 2 from Prologue-
Given this background, one may wonder what was that motivated Harteck to provide the main impetus that began the German nuclear program, which if it had been successful, would surely have lead to the German atomic bomb. Many years later in an interview, Harteck claimed that it was a simple matter of his need for financial support. He was having difficulty getting his research funded and he applied to the entity, the Army, that seemed the most highly endowed. His motivation appears to have been not too different from that of Willie Sutton, who was famous for saying that he robbed banks because, "that was were the money was "This piece of censorizing is jarring, especially since Jeremy Bernstein claims (and rightly so) that a life time of immersion in the "culture" of nuclear weapons had prepared him to read the Farm Hall Reports. And he himself had seriously considered joining a weapons laboratory in 1950s when university jobs were scarce.
p 6-7 (this was news to me )
Fermi had split the atom in 1934 but did not or could not interpret his result properly. The interpretation provided by Ida Noddack(she was a chemist, so free from a physicist's prejudices), suggesting the same was ignored, since there was no theoretical framework in Physics then to explain splitting of atom. It came later with Bohr's liquid drop model. Fermi's group again missed the discovery since they used Al foil to eliminate unwanted radiations, and missed signatures of fission. So it was left for Otto Hahn to discover it in 1938 and for Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch to interpret it correctly. Fermi fled Italy as his wife was jewish. Would there have been a Fascist bomb if Fermi's group had interpreted their results correctly?
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I wonder what sort of novel Conrad would have made out of this. Or Grass more aptly. Did he write on Pope?
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