Reminiscences of the Early Days of Fission

JUN 01, 1987

News of the discovery of fission and the onset of World War II affected the author’s activities, taking him from Princeton to Los Alamos by way of Lawrence, Kansas.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881075

Henry H. Barschall

Roger Stuewer has described how Léon Rosenfeld brought the news that uranium undergoes fission to Princeton’s Physics Journal Club on the evening of 16 January 1939—the day on which Niels Bohr and Rosenfeld had arrived in New York from Denmark. (See Stuewer’s article in PHYSICS TODAY, October 1985, page 48). Bohr had first learned of the discovery of fission from Otto Frisch on 3 January 1939, and Rosenfeld’s report was the first information received by physicists in the United States. I was in the audience and the news had an immediate impact on my own activities, and it continued to affect my work for the next six years. The following are some of my recollections of that period.

References

1. O. R. Frisch, Nature 143, 276 (1939).https://doi.org/NATUAS
2. H. H. Barschall, W. T. Harris, M. H. Kanner, L. A. Turner, Phys. Rev. 55, 989 (1939).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
3. R. Ladenburg, M. H. Kanner, H. H. Barschall, C. C. Van Voorhis, Phys. Rev. 56, 168 (1939).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
4. N. Bohr, J. A. Wheeler, Phys. Rev. 56, 426 (1939).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
5. M. H. Kanner, H. H. Barschall, Phys. Rev. 57, 372 (1939).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
6. H. H. Barschall, M. H. Kanner, Phys. Rev. 58, 590 (1940).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
7. J. D. Stranathan, The Particles of Modern Physics, Blakiston, Philadelphia (1942).
8. H. H. Barschall, J. H. Manley, V. F. Weisskopf, Phys. Rev. 72, 875 (1947).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
9. K. T. Bainbridge, Los Alamos report LA‐6300‐H (1976).

More about the Authors

Henry H. Barschall. University of Wisconsin, Madison.