Abstract
Otto Hahn is widely portrayed as a warm, considerate, charming person. The characterization is accurate. In fact, precisely because the personality of this decent human being suffered no great changes throughout his career, he offers us a touchstone to determined the extent of changes in scientists’ perceptions of their obligations to society during the twentieth century.
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Notes
Lawrence Badash, ed., Rutherford and Boltwood, Letters on Radioactivity(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), p. 81. This remark is contained in a letter from Boltwood to Rutherford, dated Sept. 22, 1905, preserved in the Rutherford Collection, Cambridge University Library.
Otto Hahn, A Scientific Autobiography(New York: Scribner’s, 1966), esp. pp. 11–36.
Otto Hahn, My Life(London: MacDonald, 1970), esp. pp. 61–74.
L. Meitner and O. R. Frisch, “Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: A New Type of Nuclear Reaction,” Nature, 143(1939), 239–240.
See Lawrence Badash, Radioactivity in America: Growth and Decay of a Science(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), Chs. 9 and 10 for a survey of early medical and commercial uses of radioactive materials.
Morris Goran, “Fritz Haber,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. V (New York: Scribner’s, 1972), p. 622.
Morris Goran, The Story of Fritz Haber(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), p. 68.
Hahn, My Life, p. 119. Richard M. Willstatter, From My Life (New York: Benjamin, 1965), p. 265.
Mario Sartori, The War Gases(New York: Van Nostrand, 1940), p. vii.
As happened also at Los Alamos in 1945. See Lawrence Badash et al. eds., Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 1943–1945 (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1980).
L. Pearce Williams, Michael Faraday(New York: Basic Books, 1965), pp. 482–483
Williams, ed., The Selected Correspondence of Michael Faraday(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), Vol. II, pp. 749–751, 767. I am indebted to Prof. Williams for this information.
Gilbert Whittemore, “World War I, Poison Gas Research, and the Ideals of American Chemists,” Soc. Stud. Sci., 5(1975), 135–163, esp. pp. 150–151.
W. J. Pope, “Chemistry in the National Service,” J. Chem. Soc. Lond., 115(1919), 397–407, esp. pp. 400–402.
Goran, Haber, p. 169.
Whittemore, “World War I,” pp. 136, 155, 158, 161.
Duncan C. Walton, The Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfare(Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1925).
Warren G. Harding, “Address of the President of the United States submitting the treaties and resolutions approved and adopted by the Conference on the Limitation of Armament,” 67th Congress, 2nd sess., Senate doc. No. 125, Feb. 3,1922 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922).
M. Goran, “Haber.” “Award of the Nobel Prize to Professor Haber,” Science, 51(1920), 208–209. For information about nationalism among scientists in World War I, see Lawrence Badash, “British and American Views of the German Menace in World War,” Notes Rec. Roy. Soc. Lond., 34(1979), 91–121.
Max Born, Physics in My Generation (London/New York: Pergamon, 1956), p. 223.
O. R. Frisch, “Physical Evidence for the Division of Heavy Nuclei under Neutron Bombardment,” Nature, 143(1939), 276.
For a survey of nearly 100 papers on fission published in 1939
Louis A. Turner, “Nuclear Fission,” Rev. Mod. Phys., 12(1940), 1–29, esp. pp. 20–21.
Robert Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns(London: Gollancz and Hart-Davis, 1958; Pelican edition, 1964), pp. 97–102.
For examples of criticisms of Jungk’s thesis, see reviews by E. U. Condon, Science, 128(1958), 1619–1620
C. P. Snow, New Republic, 139(1958), 18–19
Geoffrey Barraclough, Spectator(1958), 843–844.
O. R. Frisch, “Scientist who Opened the Way to Atom Bomb,” ObserverAug. 4, 1968.
Hahn, My Life, p. 185.
R. V. Jones, Most Secret War(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), pp. 481–483. Samuel Goudsmit, letter to the author, Oct. 28, 1977. Edward J. Reese, Military Archievs Division, U.S. National Archives, letter to the author, June 2, 1978. Margaret Gowing, former chief historian of the British Atomic Energy Authority, letter to the author [ Apr. 1978 ].
L. R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told(New York: Harpers, 1962), pp. 334–336.
Samuel Goudsmit, Alsos(New York: Schuman, 1947), pp. 134–139.
David Irving, The Virus House(London: Kimber, 1967), pp. 11–16.
Jones, Most Secret War, pp. 481–483.
Hahn, My Life, pp. 219–221. For Mainau, on July 15, 1955, see NY. Times July 16, 1955, 3: 1. For Russell-Einstein, on July 9, 1955
Hahn, My Life, pp. 222–226. Note that Born and Paneth were among a number of scientists who left Germany in the 1930s and returned after the war. “18 German Physicists Ban Work on Nuclear Weapons,” N.Y. Times Apr. 13, 1957. “German Physicists Protest Nuclear Weapons,” Science, 125(1957), 876.
Alan Beyerchen, Scientists Under Hitler(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 65–66.
A. H. Compton, Atomic Quest(London: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 41–42.
J. Chadwick, interview with the author, Feb. 11, 1970.
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Badash, L. (1983). Otto Hahn, Science, and Social Responsibility. In: Shea, W.R. (eds) Otto Hahn and the Rise of Nuclear Physics. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7133-2_6
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