Chapter 9 "An Extensive Burst" Summary

In the 1930's, Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, and Fritz Strassman, working in Germany at the Kaiser Wilheim Institute, try to sort out the elements created, when neutrons bombard the heaviest natural elements. In the midst of Meitner's work, Hitler occupies Austria, making Meitner a German Jew, and her grant is abruptly withdrawn. Meitner flees to Holland on an old passport and continues to Copenhagen and the Bohrs. Neils Bohr finds her a position and the Nobel Foundation provides a grant. Leo Szilard is also looking for a patron in the United States in 1938. He meets Jewish financier Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss, a partner at a New York investment-banking house and a self-made millionaire, who became aware of the acute shortage of radium for cancer treatment after both parents die from cancer. Szilard, working at St. Bartholomew's...