CHAPTER 17: Nuclear Physics with “the Pope”; Fission and the Hahn/Meitner Controversy: Fermi, Hahn, Meitner, Heisenberg (Italy, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Norway)

The Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi, taught himself physics and after studying in Pisa, and quickly became a full professor at the University of Rome. Fermi and his “Panisperna boys” bombarded all the known elements with neutrons and discovered that slow neutrons are more effective at producing radioactive isotopes. We visit four sites in Rome, Pisa, and Florence that celebrate both Fermi and Galileo. Lise Meitner, a shy and reserved Austrian physicist, overcame extreme gender discrimination and became one of the best-known radiophysicists. She collaborated with the outgoing German chemist, Otto Hahn, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem. Tragically exiled to Denmark in 1938, she and Otto Frisch explained that Hahn and Fritz Strassman had split the atomic nucleus, a process that Frisch called fission. Predictions that self-sustained nuclear chain reactions could produce nuclear power and weapons soon followed. At the onset of WWII, Werner Heisenberg stayed in Germany and led the efforts to produce an atomic bomb. For Hahn and Meitner, we explore sites in Vienna, Berlin, and Munich including the world-renown Deutsches Museum. After discussing Meitner sites in Kungälv, Sweden and Bramley, England, we explore two Heisenberg sites in Rjukan, Norway, and Haigerloch, Germany.