


Although the Nazis like to think they discovered fission, they probably did not book club would like to say it was Marie Curie but in 1938, two Germans, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, discovered that when they bombarded uranium with neutrons they could split the uranium atoms' nuclei into two parts releasing energy and more neutrons (a process called fission.)
From this it was obvious to scientists around the world that it was possible to create energy-producing fission chain reactions as the neutrons from one split-atom plowed into surrounding atoms, splitting them also. A controlled chain reaction could be used for constructive purposes like making heat that could be used to produce electricity. An uncontrolled chain reaction, however, would be a bomb of incalculable power. As World War II appeared on the horizon, scientists in the United States, Germany and other nations, approached their governments, warning them of these developments. At the time the state of physics research in each country was roughly on par. If this was the case, how come United States and its allies went on to develop the atomic bomb and Germany didn't?


Incompetence, Conspiracy, or Neither? In the half-century following the war, several theories arose to explain the lack of German success. Samuel Goudsmit, a member of the Allied scientific intelligence mission that investigated German progress on a bomb.

Werner Heisenberg, the head of the German program at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, was initially amazed at the success of the Allies program. He immediately tackled the question of how much uranium 235 (the only isotope of uranium which would work as a nuclear explosive) would be needed to build a bomb and came up with a figure of over a ton - way too high.
It is from this mistake that many experts have formed the opinion that Heisenberg did not really understand how a bomb would work. However, Heisenberg corrected his estimate within a few days. Also comments by Otto Hahn, who was another scientist interned at Farm Hall suggests that Heisenberg had earlier, back in Germany, made the ‘correct calculations’ with perfect correlations. Perhaps he was now hiding his knowledge thinking that he and the other scientists were under surveillance, ‘which indeed, they were’.
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