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.
2.
H. H.
Barschall
, W. T.
Harris
, M. H.
Kanner
, L. A.
Turner
, Phys. Rev.
55
, 989
(1939
).3.
R.
Ladenburg
, M. H.
Kanner
, H. H.
Barschall
, C. C.
Van Voorhis
, Phys. Rev.
56
, 168
(1939
).4.
5.
6.
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
).9.
K. T. Bainbridge, Los Alamos report LA‐6300‐H (1976).
This content is only available via PDF.
© 1987 American Institute of Physics.
1987
American Institute of Physics
You do not currently have access to this content.
