Otto R. Frisch

Nuclear scientist Otto R. Frisch begins this account with a basic lesson on what was known about the atom before 1938. It was in that year that Frisch revolutionized science after visiting his aunt, Lise Meitner in Sweden during the Christmas holidays. Meitner was also an eminent scientist who fled Nazi Germany where she had been working with uranium and radioactivity. While taking a walk in the snow, the two scientists made some calculations on scraps of paper that revealed the tremendous amount of energy that would be released upon splitting an atom. Frisch termed the atomic reaction "nuclear fission." With this momentous discovery, Frisch went to work in England and later the United States, using his knowledge of fission to help develop the first atomic bomb. He collaborated with such famous scientists as Niels Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward...