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Home , Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn

CORRESPONDENCE

It is true that we are suffering from bud­ Hahn's Nobel was well deserved get cuts more than non-university research institutions. The well-being of the universi­ SIR - I read with interest the repore on the for to Hahn (or perhaps to Hahn ties is evidently not high on our politicians' internal debates in the Nobel committee and his collaborator Strassmann). Whether priority list. For example, the decision not to that preceded the award of the Meitner (perhaps with Frisch, that excellent house the Institute for Molecular Pharma­ to in 1945. I am one of the few theoretician) should have been given the cology in existing buildings close to the surviving witnesses of Hahn's studies ­ prize for for first confirming the the­ medical school of the Free University but, ing to the discovery of fission, oretical correctness of Hahn's interpretation instead, to erect a new building on the site although I knew nothing at the time about of his result is an open question. I think of a non-university institution, is just anoth­ the details. Hahn himself would gladly have accepted er instance of the political myopia that fails As a young theoretical physicist, I worked that. But the discovery itself was clearly to see how the quality of university research for six months in 1936 with in Hahn's. will be reflected in the qualifications of the her section of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut Carl Friedrich v. Weizsacker next generation of researchers. Neverthe­ fiir Chemic in -, of which Maximilianstrasse 14c, less, I am happy to report that more than Hahn was the director. I then went to the D-82319 Starnberg, 700 full , about 3,000 scientists, Kaiser-Wilhelm-lnstitut fiir Physik, also in and 49,000 students are still working hard Berlin-Dahlem, five minutes' walk away. In and successfully at the Free University of the last week of 1938, Hahn telephoned and SIR - Crawford et al. 1 deserve credit for Berlin. So we are suffering because of short­ asked me: "Can you imagine a their Commentary article in which they shed sighted politics but wreaths are premature. which in every chemical separation does not more on the circumstances leading Klaus Roth go with radium but with ?" I asked: to the award in 1945 of the 1944 Nobel prize Free University of Berlin, "Do you have such a substance?" He to Otto Hahn. Thielallee 66, answered "Yes". I said: "Perhaps it is really However, their statement that "Hahn D-14195 Berlin, barium." He said: "Yes, but then the urani­ and his colleagues immediately began writ­ Germany um nucleus must have been split." This ing Meitner out of the discovery of nuclear shows that he really had discovered and fission" when, on 6 August 1945, during identified the splitting of uranium. But, as their detention at Farm Hall, they heard Plants and AIDS an empirically working , he felt about the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, is a somewhat uncertain about it and so he rather one-sided portrayal. SIR-The News story "Chemistry asked me, as a theoretical physicist, whether As can be seen from reports by Major takes over Islamic science organization" I believed it. T. H. Rittner, their British 'host' at Farm ( 382, 487; 1996) incorrectly states When he wrote to Meitner, who was then Hall, the detainees became very worried that a claim has been made that our institute in Sweden, he was similarly cautious. From about reports in the next day's newspapers is close to finding a therapy for AIDS. The members of his institute, I soon learned that of their alleged work on the atomic bomb in article was apparently based on a distorted Hahn and Meitner had discussed the prob­ Germany. At Rittner's suggestion, there­ press version of our interesting discovery of lem before she left his institute in the late fore, on 8 August 1945 the Germans drew four plants that are active against HIV-1. A summer of 1938. Several years previously, up a memorandum setting out their side of clarification by us was subsequently pub­ Frederic Joliot in Paris had bombarded the story2• One of the issues dealt with in the lished in the national Urdu newspaper lang. uranium with and produced a memorandum was the discovery of nuclear We initiated a collaborative programme substance that he interpreted as a radium fission, which in the newspapers was attrib­ with the US National Institutes of Health . This was very difficult for a physi­ uted only to Meitner3• (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, about four cist such as Meitner to believe. Hahn said: The authors are right to consider the years ago to search for plants with anti­ "I must study those 'radium ' of memorandum as showing the Farm Hall cancer and anti-AIDS activities. Plants are Joliot's." Meitner said: "It isn't worth the detainees "writing Meitner out of the dis­ collected from remote areas of Pakistan, effort. It must be an error. It's nonsense." covery of ". But it would have extracted and the extracts subjected to But as soon as she had left the institute, been fair to have stated that the detainees screening at NIH. As result of this pro­ Hahn, with Strassmann, started to repeat were reacting to newspaper reports that gramme, we have discovered four plants Joliot's experiment, and he found the chem­ mentioned only Meitner as the discoverer. with varying degrees of activity against the ical behaviour of barium. Some members of Jan H. J. Oelering HIV-I virus. Hahn's institute later told me: "If Lise Meit­ Hofwijkstraat 4, The active plants are subjected to bio­ ner had stayed in Berlin, it is quite possible 6825 AI Arnhem, assay-directed fractionation in order to that Hahn would not have started this The Netherlands isolate the bioactive constituents. Although experiment and so would not have been the 1. Crawford. E., Sime, R. L. & Walker, M. Nature 382, we consider the discovery of plants with one who discovered uranium fission." 393-395 (1996). anti-AIDS activity exciting, we do not claim 2. : The Farm Hall Transcripts, 93 (Institute When Meitner learned from Hahn's of Physics, Bristol, 1993). to be close to finding a "therapy for AIDS". letter what he had found, she, with Otto 3. Sime, R. L. Use Meitner: A Life in Physics, 323 (University We are at present actively seeking collabora­ Frisch, invented a correct model of the of California Press, 1996). tion with hospitals specializing in the treat­ process, that is, she confirmed his empirical ment of AIDS patients in order to carry out result by finding a theoretical description of double-blind clinical trials on the phyto­ its possibility. It is true that she used a theo­ No funeral in Berlin chemical preparations. retical model of the nucleus invented by Atta-ur-Rahman , but it was she and Frisch who SIR - Alison Abbott recently reported on (Director) first applied it to Hahn's discovery, which the poor financial health of the Berlin uni­ H.E.J. Research Institute they knew about from Hahn's letter before versities, particularly the "nearly bankrupt of Chemistry, it was published. But she had private contact Free University" (Nature 382, 486; 1996). University of Karachi, with Bohr, who confirmed her conclusion. The impression was conveyed that demise is Karachi, Pakistan Thus it was right to give the Nobel prize imminent and condolences are in order. e-mail: [email protected] 294 NATURE · VOL 383 · 26 SEPTEMBER 1996