Additional Sources
Unless otherwise noted, the level is appropriate for middle-school students and above.
Web sites
Students and teachers can find a wealth of related materials on the Web. An investigation of what is available may include searches for:
- Names of the scientists involved: Meitner, Hahn, Strassman, Bohr, etc.
- Nobel speeches of Fermi, Compton, Einstein, Bohr, Hahn, Curie, etc.
- Key words: Nuclear fission, transmutation
Readings
Many of these are out of print, but your local library may be able to get them through inter-library loan.
- Anderson, David L. Discoveries in Physics: Supplemental Unit B of Project Physics Course. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. Chapter 3 reviews the discovery of fission at the high school level (a good companion to the voices in the exhibit). The book's prologue and epilogue discuss different models for scientific discovery.
- Badash,
Lawrence. Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons : from
Fission to the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1939-1963. Atlantic Highlands,
N.J. : Humanities Press, 1995. A fine compact account at the advanced high school
- college level.
- Fermi,
Laura. Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1954 (reissued by American Institute of Physics,
1987).
A biography of Fermi by his wife, with excellent accounts
of the personal accounts of his work and insights on the lives of other
physicists.
- Graetzer, H.G., and D. L. Anderson. The Discovery of Nuclear Fission. New York: Van Nostrand-Reinhold, 1971. A complete historical account using excerpts from original scientific papers. For advanced high school students and above.
- Hahn, Otto. Otto Hahn: A Scientific Autobiography. New York: Scribner's, 1966. Includes an informative account of Hahn's part in the discovery of fission.
- Kragh,
Helge. Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth
Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
A solid and readable survey at the high school - college
level by a historian of science.
- Rhodes,
Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York : Simon &
Schuster, 1986.
The best popular history from the 1930s through the Manhattan Project, well-written but long.
- Segrè, Emilio. From X-rays to Quarks : Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980. Popular history of 20th-century physics, by a Nobelist from Fermi's group.
- Shea, William R., ed. Otto Hahn and the Rise of Nuclear Physics. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983. Detailed scholarly articles on the history of Hahn's work and fission.
- Smyth, H. D. A General Account of the Development of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. Washington, DC: Superintendent of Documents, 1945. The official account of the work on the atomic bomb, including popular-level descriptions of physical problems as well as project administration.