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Two books, both of which have been on the market for more than ten years, deal with the domestic history of nuclear research, as well as the atomic bomb. Of course not about the ones that were dropped in Japan in 1945, but about a bomb that was not built. “How nuclear physicists helped prevent the Nazis’ atomic bomb,” is the subtitle of the brand-new book by German science journalist Astrid Viciano.
To stay in Austria first, a look at Boltzmanngasse in Vienna-Alsergrund in the early 20th century. The Institute for Radium Research of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (today: SMI, Stefan Meyer Institute) was opened there at number 3, still during the Kaiser's time, on October 28, 1910 - the first in the world of its time! This early institutionalization in the field of radioactivity research underlines Austria's leading position in the field of "radioactivists", as the men and women of the first hour called themselves.
Historian Silke Fengler comments on this in her book Cores, Cooperation and Competition: "(...) before the First World War, four European centers essentially dominated events: the Laboratoire Curie in Paris, Ernest Rutherford's laboratory in Manchester, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) for Chemistry in Berlin and the Vienna Institute for Radium Research." The research couple Marie and Pierre Curie discovered polonium in July 1898 and radium in December 1898, elements that were the focus of research from then on. The only thing that was difficult was obtaining them. Radium occurs very rarely in nature and is always bound to uranium ore (pitchblende, uraninite). Austria had - at least until 1918 - significant supplies of pitchblende in Bohemia, which the Curies also made use of.
The physicist Franz Serafin Exner, born in 1849, played a central role in the early days. From 1891 he took over the management of the Physical-Chemical Institute. From June 1901 he was chairman of the new "Commission for the Investigation of Radioactive Substances". Fengler's original statement: "From the beginning, radioactivity research was anchored by Exner at the center of the academic world of the Habsburg Empire" (page 41). One of Exner's students, his assistant Stefan Meyer, had taken over the Institute for Radium Research as the unofficial director; Exner was the formal boss.
A total of 19 foreign scientists worked here between 1913 and 1922. With the outbreak of the First World War came a turning point that also affected the world of research. In the chapter “From radioactivity to atomic destruction research, 1919–1932,” the author sheds light on the natural sciences after 1918 and the newly formed circle around Exner, who died in 1926. From then on, Exner's students from the second generation of researchers played important roles in the international research network.
In the years from 1932 up to the annexation of Hitler's Germany, large research laboratories were established in the USA, France and other European countries. "A decisive role was played by the fact that foreign guests left Vienna and the financial resources dwindled" (page 179). The Nazi regime brought the next cuts combined with the departure of well-known researchers such as Erwin Schrödinger (1933: Nobel Prize) or Viktor Hess (1936: Nobel Prize). Those who remained did not have an easy fate.
"Stefan Meyer was placed on leave as head of the institute in April 1938 with immediate effect" (page 238). After the war, the reconstruction of nuclear research progressed slowly during the occupation. "It took a concerted effort by several European partners so that it could reconnect with international developments in the context of CERN," says the book's final sentence on page 333.
The book Nuclear Research in Austria - Changes in an Interdisciplinary Research Field 1900–1978, edited by Carola Sachse and Silke Fengler, brings together twelve contributions by internationally recognized experts. A look at the year 1978: The referendum on November 5th resulted in a narrow no with 50.47 percent of the votes against the commissioning of the completed Zwentendorf nuclear power plant (Lower Austria). This fact is well known.
Christian Forstner provides further, often little-known details in his article “On the history of the Austrian nuclear energy programs”. During the occupation, in December 1954, a group was formed in the Electrotechnical Association of Austria (EVÖ) with the aim of evaluating the possibilities for peaceful use of nuclear energy in Austria. Berta Karlik, head of the Institute for Radium Research, presented an overview of different reactor types including costs.
The first goal was to build a research reactor, like the one many European countries had at the time. In 1959 the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities was founded. "Last but not least, three research reactors went into operation: the ASTRA reactor of the industry-dominated SGAE in Seibersdorf (Lower Austria) in 1960, the TRIGA MARK II of the Austrian universities in the Vienna Prater in 1962 and, away from the main event, a small Siemens Argonaut reactor at the Graz University of Technology in 1963" (page 171).
At the end of the 1960s, nuclear energy production became a central issue. After a study on atomic energy in Austria in October 1967, the Nuclear Power Plant Planning Company m.b.H. was founded in April 1968. (KKWP). The decision to build the nuclear power plant in Zwentendorf was made in March 1971 under the government of Bruno Kreisky, and the first excavators were installed there in February 1972. An accident in April 1972 at the German Würgassen nuclear power plant (North Rhine-Westphalia) led to plan changes and construction being delayed by two years. During this time, the anti-nuclear movement was formed, which ultimately led to the "no" vote on November 5, 1978.
Other contributions deal with the Gastein Research Institute (contribution: Wolfgang Knierzinger), research personalities such as Carl Freiherr Auer von Welsbach (1858 to 1929) (contribution: Ingrid Groß, Gerd Loffler) or Marietta Blau (contribution: Ruth Lewin Sime) or the research into cosmic radiation (contribution: Vanessa Cirkel-Bartelt), for whose discovery in 1912 Viktor Hess won the Nobel Prize in 1936 for physics, as an information board on the Hafelekar in Innsbruck (Tyrol) reminds us.
The book The Formula of Resistance - How nuclear physicists helped to prevent the Nazis' atomic bomb by German science journalist Astrid Viciano, published in October 2024, begins like a crime thriller. "On one weekend of all days, a factory director and a banker set out to win a secret race against Nazi Germany. In the middle of the freezing night of March 9, 1940, they drive in separate cars from Oslo to the remote mountains on the edge of the Vestfjord valley in Vemork, past dark pine forests and icy mountain slopes" (page 7).
The destination of the trip was a factory where heavy water was produced. It was about its procurement, as was the title of the first chapter, about a liquid that was then considered a necessary ingredient for the development of an atomic bomb. The other eight chapters alone describe how nuclear physics suddenly turned into secret research and the German Army Weapons Office occupied the Paris laboratory of the then leading French nuclear physicist.
The escape of many researchers from the German occupiers is also meticulously described in the book. “The Beginning of a Fateful Friendship” is followed by “Return to a Foreign Homeland” before it turns to “German Occupiers at the Collège de France”. This culminates in the “persecution of French scientists.” After a certain drama "In the hands of the security police" everything seems lost ("The threads are slipping out of hand") before it comes to "Terror and escape" and the final "liberation" - that's what the headlines read across.
The main characters are the German physicist Wolfgang Gentner and the French Nobel Prize winner Frédéric Joliot-Curie, son-in-law of Marie Curie. Gentner had known Joliot-Curie since 1933, since the German spent two years in Marie Curie's laboratory. At the end of 1938, everything changed with the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann and the explanation by Lise Meitner. There was a huge surge in research worldwide. Suddenly the military announced its interest. The aim was to use less the mere nuclear fission and more the chain reaction, in which enormous amounts of energy were released.
Joliot-Curie had everything he needed in Paris: the largest particle accelerator at the time, heavy water (26 canisters) and uranium. "Frédéric Joliot-Curie was working on such a chain reaction before the occupiers arrived; Schumann (physicist and head of the research department of the Army Weapons Office) and his colleagues became interested in this during their visit (to Paris)" (page 75). During the visit mentioned here, which was actually an interrogation, Gentner had to interpret. He, who had always been on friendly terms with Joliot-Curie, suddenly found himself caught between two stools. "The wrong uniform. The wrong role. The wrong text" (page 73). Viciano, writes as if she had been there herself at the time.
So much can be said in advance. The Joliot-Curies had gotten uranium and heavy water out of the country in a timely manner and in this way prevented research for military purposes by the German invaders. In this way they helped to "prevent the Nazis' atomic bomb" (subtitle).
"I lived in Paris for four years and kept walking past the Curie's house," said Munich-based science journalist Astrid Viciano, a doctor of medicine. Inspired by the “genus loci,” she began researching two generations of Curies, who received a total of three Nobel Prizes. A book was almost on the horizon; after three years of work in German and French archives, it was finished.
Conclusion: Cores, Cooperation and Competition convinces through the chronological presentation of domestic research. Nuclear research in Austria provides in-depth approaches and contributions that contribute to a broader understanding. The formula of resistance leads to Paris. Here, committed French researchers resist the desires of the German rulers and prevent the worst possible thing - the construction of an atomic bomb. (Thomas Hofmann, January 3, 2025)