Chronicles-blog
July 16th Trinity Test Birthday: New Content for Book Clubs
July 16th will mark the 75th anniversary of the first atomic test, known as Trinity. The day is rightly known as the day the world changed forever, entering into the “nuclear age.”
Read MoreDR. LISE MEITNER: THE MYSTERY OF THE DISAPPEARING PHYSICIST
In the August 7, 1945 issue of the New York Times under the headline: FIRST ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN; TRUMAN WARNS FOE OF A ‘RAIN OF RUIN,’” an article traces the simultaneously terrifying and wondrous development of the atomic bomb, its scientific history, and the race between the Allies and the Germans to attain the ultimate weapon. Somewhere under the fold, buried in a dense paragraph, this sentence appears: “The key component that allowed the Allies to develop the bomb was brought to the Allies by a female, ‘non-Aryan’ physicist.” Who was this woman?
Read MoreQ&A With Jan Eliasberg on her Research for Hannah’s War
Jan answers some questions to reveal the fascinating historical background to her novel Hannah’s War.
Read MoreEntranced by Research: Hannah’s War is not a Simple Biopic
Ruth Lewin Sime’s ground-breaking non-fiction book Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, along with Meitner’s Letters and Diaries, were the building blocks for Hannah Weiss’s story.
Read MoreAbout Dr. Lise Meitner: Inspiration for Hannah’s War
One of the great luxuries of living in New York City is having access to the Public Library’s extraordinary microfilm collection; it was there that I read the issue of the New York Times on the day the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In the Times’ summary of the complex and secret history of the Manhattan Project, one paragraph leapt off the page: “The key component that allowed the Allies to develop the bomb was brought to the Allies by a “female, non-Aryan physicist.’” Who was this woman, I wondered, And why isn’t her face staring out of every science textbook?
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