The dominant event that lay in the background to Werner Heisenberg's fateful meeting with Niels Bohr in occupied Copenhagen in September 1941 was the discovery and interpretation of nuclear fission three years earlier. Particular examples include Hahn’s efforts to help Jewish friends his testimony for colleagues involved in denazification and on trial in Nuremberg his postwar relationships with émigré colleagues, including Lise Meitner and his misrepresentation of his wartime work in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry.Īn Act of Scientific Creativity: Meitner, Frisch, and Nuclear Fission I outline Hahn’s activities from 1933 into the postwar years, focusing on the contrast between his personal stance during the National Socialist period, when he distinguished himself as an upright non-Nazi, and his postwar attitude, which was characterized by suppression and denial of Germany’s recent past. The Politics of Memory: Otto Hahn and the Third ReichĪs President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its successor, the Max Planck Society, from 1946 until 1960, Otto Hahn (1879 1968) sought to portray science under the Third Reich as a purely intellectual endeavor untainted by National Socialism. Discusses the controversial 1944 Nobel Prize award to Hahn (ignoring the equal contribution of Meitner), the reaction of the scientific community, and the post-war years of both Meitner and Hahn. Reveals the stormy relationship and ongoing controversy surrounding the scientific collaboration of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner. I then use this as a basis for judging Hahn’s postwar apologia as the last president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and first president of its successor, the Max Planck Society.ĮRIC Educational Resources Information Center I examine what Hahn and the scientists in his Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem did during the Third Reich, in particular, the significant contributions they made to the German uranium project during the Second World War. The role that Otto Hahn (1879 1968) played in the discovery of nuclear fission and whether Lise Meitner (1878 1968) should have shared the Nobel Prize for that discovery have been subjects of earlier studies, but there is more to the story. Forbidden to emigrate, she narrowly escaped to the Netherlands with the help of concerned friends in the international physics community. Lise Meitner (1878-1968) achieved prominence as a nuclear physicist in Germany although of Jewish origin, her Austrian citizenship exempted her from Nazi racial laws until the annexation of Austria in 1938 precipitated her dismissal.
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