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This book presents the first detailed biography of George Placzek -
an outstanding physicist, a participant in the Manhattan Project
who stood at the very inception of nuclear physics and the
subsequent development of the nuclear bomb in the course of the
WWII. In the 1930s, George Placzek was known as an adventurous
person with a sharp sense of humor, a tireless generator of novel
physics ideas which he generously shared with his colleagues. Born
in Brno (now Czech Republic) into a wealthy Jewish family, he lost
all his relatives to Holocaust, casting a tragic shadow on his
life.Placzek's scientific career began in the late 1920s when the
quantum revolution was almost over, but nuclear physics was still
at its infancy. He established personal and scientific relations
with the creators of quantum mechanics, such as Heisenberg in
Leipzig and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. In Rome, he worked with
Fermi, and in Copenhagen he became a part of Bohr's nuclear physics
team which dominated nuclear theory at that time. The scope of
Placzek's pilgrimage around world physics centers in the 1930s was
unique among his colleagues. In January 1939, George Placzek
managed to emigrate from Europe to the US, and became a part of the
British Mission within the Manhattan Project. His physical insights
were instrumental in advancing from the basic discoveries on
nuclear chain reactions to the Trinity experiment, Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.This book is a unique compilation of a large number of
previously unknown and unpublished documents from private and
university archives, police reports, etc. Placzek's correspondence
with the leadership of the Hebrew University in 1934, the 1937 NKVD
interrogation files of Konrad Weisselberg, recollections of Ella
Andriesse as well as the Zurich Police report of 1956 detailing the
circumstances of Placzek's death in a Zurich hotel are illuminating
as they shed light on poorly known pages of his life.
This book presents the first detailed biography of George Placzek -
an outstanding physicist, a participant in the Manhattan Project
who stood at the very inception of nuclear physics and the
subsequent development of the nuclear bomb in the course of the
WWII. In the 1930s, George Placzek was known as an adventurous
person with a sharp sense of humor, a tireless generator of novel
physics ideas which he generously shared with his colleagues. Born
in Brno (now Czech Republic) into a wealthy Jewish family, he lost
all his relatives to Holocaust, casting a tragic shadow on his
life.Placzek's scientific career began in the late 1920s when the
quantum revolution was almost over, but nuclear physics was still
at its infancy. He established personal and scientific relations
with the creators of quantum mechanics, such as Heisenberg in
Leipzig and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. In Rome, he worked with
Fermi, and in Copenhagen he became a part of Bohr's nuclear physics
team which dominated nuclear theory at that time. The scope of
Placzek's pilgrimage around world physics centers in the 1930s was
unique among his colleagues. In January 1939, George Placzek
managed to emigrate from Europe to the US, and became a part of the
British Mission within the Manhattan Project. His physical insights
were instrumental in advancing from the basic discoveries on
nuclear chain reactions to the Trinity experiment, Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.This book is a unique compilation of a large number of
previously unknown and unpublished documents from private and
university archives, police reports, etc. Placzek's correspondence
with the leadership of the Hebrew University in 1934, the 1937 NKVD
interrogation files of Konrad Weisselberg, recollections of Ella
Andriesse as well as the Zurich Police report of 1956 detailing the
circumstances of Placzek's death in a Zurich hotel are illuminating
as they shed light on poorly known pages of his life.
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