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racer-v | 7 years ago

Actually this conference was largely from a previous generation of scientific thinkers. According to their Wikipedia bios, Niels Bohr was the only one of those 10 names involved in the Manhattan Project. Einstein wrote a letter alerting President Roosevelt to the possibility of a German atomic bomb which may have helped inspire the project. Heisenberg was also involved in the war effort but "knew little of the Manhattan Project, so, if he were captured, he would have little intelligence value to the Germans".

discuss

order

raattgift|7 years ago

Wow.

You quote -- without attribution -- wikipedia, and you get the antecedent wrong.

I'll italicize the exact words you quote after their preceding sentence in the Werner Heisenberg article on wikipedia:

"Godusmit was selected for this task because he had physics knowledge, he spoke German, and he personally knew a number of the german scientists working on the German nuclear energy project. He also knew little of the Manhattan Project, so, if he were captured, he would have little intelligence value to the Germans."

Note that the "he" in the second sentence is Godusmit, not Heisenberg.

Heisenberg was, according to Meitner, straightforwardly a supporter of the Nazi regime. Whether or not he was ideologically committed to the party, Heisenberg was most definitely involved in the war effort -- on the German side! [ https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/07/us/letter-may-solve-nazi-... -- first sentence, "The leader of the Nazi atomic bomb program, Werner Heisenberg, revealed its existence ..." a paragraph later: "Heisenberg never expressed moral qualms about building a bomb for Hitler or hinted that he might be willing to sabotage the project, the documents reveal" with a follow-up here https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/world/new-twist-on-physic... ].

Further (and much more detailed) discussion from 2016 at APS Physics: https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201607/heisenberg....