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Overhearing Heisenberg COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS former Yugoslavia — began excavat- ing the burial sites. They pieced together some evidence of when and how the mass killings had taken place from clues such as the bodies’ states of decay, the times and dates on their self-winding watches, INTERFOTO/AKG-IMAGES and the characteristic patterns of damage caused to skulls by bullets. Analysis of the colours and textures of soils pointed to where some of the bones had first been dumped. For example, chips of glass indicated burial near a glass factory in the area. The task of identifying the bones was exquisitely difficult. The bulldozers had broken up the bodies, and the pieces had been mixed up in the dumper trucks transporting them to new burial sites. DNA analysis of each bone was the only possible method of conclusive identifica- tion, so the ICMP set up its lab. Left to right: Werner Heisenberg, Max von Laue and Otto Hahn in Göttingen, Germany, in 1946. At first, this remarkable operation ran on a shoestring. Members invented PHYSICS cheap alternatives for equipment, such as adapting a chicken rotisserie from the local market to stir DNA solutions. All of these staff (many of them “massively Overhearing Heisenberg adaptable” graduates, Jennings writes) were locals, who could easily commu- Ann Finkbeiner ponders a script inspired by the 1945 nicate with the traumatized relatives of internment of eminent German physicists in England. the missing. This helped them to collect the blood samples for the DNA analysis needed for comparison with DNA from y July 1945, the Allies and Germans had Farm Hall the Germans came to the bones. spent years racing each other to build an DAVID CASSIDY building the bomb. Each staff member was trained in a atomic bomb. The German physicists Staged reading in Bernstein thought the Santa Fe, New Mexico: specific aspect of this analysis, which Bwere certain of their technological superiority, tension was the Ger- May 2014. was then carried out in modular fashion. but had not even taken the first step — build- man scientists’ con- The remains were first prepared for DNA ing a working reactor. The Manhattan Project struction of a version of reality in which they extraction, then scientists, who had panicked that the Germans had refused to build the bomb for Hitler on “More than ground into pow- would build this evil thing first, had made four principle. Cassidy, however, focuses on their 80% of the der in the Republic bombs. But that July, neither side knew for realization of their technological inferiority — remains were of Srpska, now an certain how close the other had come. So, just on how they rationalized what he calls their returned to independent Ser- after the Nazi surrender, the Allies captured own “fall into failure”. their families bian enclave within ten German nuclear scientists — including Cassidy quotes verbatim from the tran- for burial.” Bosnia. Next, the Werner Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, Max von script, putting the stiffly translated German powder was trans- Laue, Kurt Diebner and Carl Friedrich von into American English. He narrows the cast ferred to Sarajevo for DNA extraction. Weizsäcker — sequestered them in Farm Hall, down to five scientists, including Heisenberg, Through that analysis, more than 80% of a country house in deepest Cambridgeshire, who led the German nuclear programme and the remains were returned to their families UK, and bugged their rooms. won the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics; Hahn, for burial. Transcripts of the taped conversations were who co-discovered fission; and Diebner, an That story needed to be told. But declassified and published almost 50 years engineer. Their military minder at Farm Hall, Bosnia’s Million Bones is a confusing read. later in Operation Epsilon (University of Cali- Theodore Rittner, has arranged for the secret It weaves in other, undoubtedly impor- fornia Press, 1993) and annotated in physicist taping, translation and transcription of their tant, stories — such as the manhunt for Jeremy Bernstein’s Hitler’s Uranium Club (AIP conversations for British and US intelligence. the war criminals responsible for the Press, 1995). But they begged to be a play. The scientists settle in and get comfort- massacres — and diverts frequently into Now David Cassidy, historian of physics at able. They talk. issues involving unrelated wars. Its struc- Hofstra University in New York, has written They try to figure out why they’re being ture is undisciplined, muddling time- a one-act script called Farm Hall. Whereas held. To keep them out of the hands of the lines and sometimes even basic numbers a recent produced play by Alan Brody (also Russians? Because the Allies want to know (such as the number of victims identi- called Operation Epsilon) focused on the sci- what they know? They compliment them- fied by a particular date). But those who entists’ morals in trying to build a bomb for selves on being ahead of the Allies, who — make it through will emerge shaken, and Hitler, Cassidy looks at the scientists’ accounts they think — cannot build a reactor in which educated. ■ of their failure to do so. uranium can be collected into a near-critical Both playwrights had to choose, from mass and begin fission. They argue about why Alison Abbott is Nature’s senior the mess of reality, one central tension. I they never actually built the reactor: because European correspondent. thought that the tension might be how close Heisenberg insisted on using his design rather 466 | NATURE | VOL 503 | 28 NOVEMBER 2013 © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT than Diebner’s more effectual one? The scientists skirt around the moral issue of building an atomic bomb for the Books in brief Reich. Heisenberg and the others agree that they did what was necessary to protect the Shaping Humanity: How Science, Art, and Imagination Help Us future of German science. Hahn, who never Understand Our Origins worked on the bomb, says that he loves Ger- John Gurche YALE UNIVERSItY PRESS (2013) many but is glad that her criminal leaders Palaeoartist John Gurche crafts hyperrealistic sculptures of extinct lost the war. Diebner says that he joined the hominins, built up from casts or three-dimensional models of their Nazi party because he needed work. skeletons. To bring these individuals from deep time to ‘life’, Gurche On the night of 6 August, they listen to the fuses his knowledge of comparative anatomy with forensic science BBC’s announcement that the United States and informed guesses about expressions and poses. His coffee- has dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. table gem showcases and contextualizes 15 of these finely judged Stunned, they try to figure out how the Allies creations, representing a span of 6 million years and ranging from managed it. Heisenberg calculates that by Sahelanthropus tchadensis to the ‘Hobbit’ Homo floresiensis. using 100,000 mass spectrometers, one could separate out enough of the fissile but rare iso- tope of uranium for a bomb — about a tonne. Polio Wars: Sister Kenny and the Golden Age of American Hahn is confused: aren’t Heisenberg’s calcula- Medicine tions out by a factor of ten? (They are.) Naomi Rogers OXFORD UNIVERSItY PRESS (2013) The next day, they read the British news- Before the Salk vaccine was licensed in 1955, polio epidemics swept papers, which brag that the Allies won the the United States. Naomi Rogers traces them through the story atomic race. They are outraged, having of Australian-born ‘bush nurse’ Elizabeth Kenny, who eschewed thought they were so far ahead that racing splinting in favour of early muscle manipulation. Her star rose, but was irrelevant. They disagree about whether her methods stirred controversy and she was forgotten with the they were even trying to build a bomb or, as vaccine’s advent. Kenny’s principal legacy, Rogers speculates, might Heisenberg begins to insist, just a reactor. be her idea — unacknowledged in the evolution of polio science — Everybody agrees that the German govern- that the disease was systemic rather than neurotropic. ment kept them too short of funds for success. They write an official memorandum explain- ing that their efforts were directed towards The Last Alchemist in Paris: And Other Curious Tales From building a power-producing reactor and that Chemistry working on a bomb had not been feasible. Lars Öhrström OXFORD UNIVERSItY PRESS (2013) About five months later, they go home — History offers a painless way to grasp the periodic table’s 114 Heisenberg to the directorship of the Kaiser confirmed elements, notes chemist Lars Öhrström. So, for instance, Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, and we visit Cumbria in northern England, once an “information the others also to worthy and interesting jobs. technology hub” that supplied the graphite used in pencils. And As Cassidy says, they fall from the heights of we follow the Swedish playwright August Strindberg as, gripped by their arrogance, but not far. psychosis, he set up an alchemical lab in Paris — leading Öhrström Cassidy’s script has had two readings; to ponder lithium carbonate (used to treat bipolar disorder), as well others are planned, and a Spanish produc- as gold. There is much more in this charming mishmash of a primer. tion in Santiago, Chile, is in preparation. Cassidy is expanding his play to two acts. “I don’t think I could have picked a more dif- Fritz Kahn ficult subject for my first play,” he says. The Uta von Debschitz and Thilo von Debschitz TASCHEN (2013) difficulty lies in the multiplicity of historical The 1926 Man as Industrial Palace is only the most iconic of the realities that he must cram into one plot that images unleashed by infographics pioneer Fritz Kahn.
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