Professor Mark Walker from Union College in the USA and a world authority on the Nazi German atomic bomb project will visit Sweden and the Center for the History of Science in May. He has recently published the book Hitler’s Atomic Bomb: History, Legend, and the Twin Legacies of Auschwitz and Hiroshima by Cambridge University Press.
He will lecture in the Linnaeus Hall on Tuesday 20 May at 4:00 PM – in English – about:
History and Legend: Werner Heisenberg’s 1941 Visit with Niels Bohr in Occupied Copenhagen
In September of 1941, Werner Heisenberg visited Niels Bohr in occupied Denmark and told him that he believed that atomic bombs were feasible and the Germans were working on them. According to the legend of Copenhagen, Heisenberg did this in order to gain Bohr’s help in convincing all physicists to not work on nuclear weapons. This talk will place this visit into the context of Heisenberg’s many foreign trips during the war in order to scrutinize both the legend and actual history of Copenhagen.
You can register for the lecture by emailing your interest to centrum@kva.se (limited number of places).
The following day, Thursday 22 May, he will lecture at the Department of History of Ideas and Learning in Uppsala at 13:00 on:
Werner Heisenberg, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the Bomb
Werner Heisenberg and J. Robert Oppenheimer were two of the most important physicists in the twentieth century. Each played an important role in their respective country’s projects (Nazi Germany for Heisenberg, the United States for Oppenheimer) to build atomic bombs during the second world war. Myths and legends were created around both men in the postwar period as they tried to deal with the legacies of the Holocaust and the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This talk will compare and contrast the careers of these two scientists.