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atw - International Journal for Nuclear Power | 04.2019

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<strong>atw</strong> Vol. 64 (2019) | Issue 4 ı April<br />

ENERGY POLICY, ECONOMY AND LAW 206<br />

Chemistry in 1944. Later, Otto Hahn<br />

referred to the use of nuclear fission<br />

<strong>for</strong> military purposes as a “mess” that<br />

he wanted no part of. [31] He initiated<br />

action against the military use of<br />

nuclear power, such as the Mainau<br />

Declaration in 1955 or the Göttingen<br />

Declaration in 1957.<br />

To receive his Nobel Prize, Hahn<br />

had to wait until the ceremony of 1946.<br />

Awarding the prize to Otto Hahn alone<br />

probably remains one of the most<br />

debated decisions of the Nobel committee<br />

until today. In his Nobel Lecture<br />

on December 13 th , 1946, Hahn<br />

explained the work of the team Hahn,<br />

Meitner, and Straßmann in great<br />

detail. [11, p. 247 and following pages]<br />

Being a Nobel Laureate, Otto Hahn<br />

later led the Kaiser- Wilhelm- Gesellschaft<br />

and its successor, the Max-<br />

Planck- Gesellschaft, whose presidency<br />

he held until 1960.<br />

Nevertheless, the developments<br />

that occurred in other fields after the<br />

discovery of nuclear fission have<br />

certainly had a tremendous impact on<br />

humanity. The enormous energy<br />

release of the fission process soon led<br />

the scientific community to think<br />

about the possibilities of a power<br />

reactor or an explosive bomb, in the<br />

beginning cautiously called machine.<br />

Enrico Fermi built the first nuclear<br />

reactor in the world in Chicago in<br />

1942. The first atomic bomb was<br />

developed in the Manhattan Project.<br />

With an incredible amount of money<br />

and work<strong>for</strong>ce, the Americans pushed<br />

their nuclear program. Today, we see<br />

it as the beginning of a new era when<br />

the first atomic bomb was detonated<br />

on July 16, 1945 in the New Mexico<br />

desert. The nuclear arms race was just<br />

about to begin. To this day, the earth<br />

has been shaken by 2053 nuclear<br />

explosions. [32]<br />

The artifact:<br />

The “Otto-Hahn-table”<br />

Since the 1920s, the Deutsches<br />

Museum has had contact with Lise<br />

Meitner, Otto Hahn and colleagues in<br />

Berlin. They exchanged letters with<br />

regard to donations of books or<br />

samples of the element protactinium<br />

discovered by Meitner and Hahn. [33]<br />

Especially the director Jonathan<br />

Zenneck corresponded with Otto<br />

Hahn at length and in a friendly tone.<br />

In 1952, the director of the Max<br />

Planck Institute <strong>for</strong> Chemistry in<br />

Mainz got in touch with the Deutsches<br />

Museum to discuss the existing equipment<br />

by Otto Hahn. Parts of the<br />

original equipment that had been<br />

moved after the war from Berlin via<br />

the small city of Tailfingen to Mainz<br />

had been arranged there on a table<br />

and presented to the public. Once the<br />

table and the apparatus were erected<br />

in the museum, they waited <strong>for</strong> a text<br />

to explain their meaning. It was<br />

planned that a marble tablet should<br />

bear the following text:<br />

OTTO HAHN<br />

Discovered in 1938, together with<br />

Fritz Straßmann, the fission of<br />

uranium by neutrons, thus creating<br />

the basis <strong>for</strong> the technical realization<br />

of atomic energy. [34]<br />

Otto Hahn was specifically asked<br />

by Jonathan Zenneck about his opinion<br />

of this synopsis. In his reply dated<br />

April 8, 1953, Hahn was unenthusiastic<br />

about the plans of the Museum:<br />

“As much as I am delighted about<br />

the attention [...] I’m a little depressed<br />

about the presentation that is<br />

apparently intended. It seems to me<br />

somewhat exaggerated to construct a<br />

special niche with a marble table,<br />

because if the fission of uranium has<br />

been found in aftermath to be very<br />

important, neither Mr. Straßmann nor<br />

I had any share in this development.”<br />

In his letter, he goes on to mention<br />

Lise Meitner and again asks <strong>for</strong> his<br />

name not to be “mentioned with a<br />

special appearance”. [35]<br />

This letter clearly contradicts the<br />

image that has sometimes been drawn<br />

of Otto Hahn that he had spoken<br />

too rarely about the share of his<br />

colleagues in the discovery, particularly<br />

Lise Meitner’s share. The mere<br />

mentioning of the two colleagues in<br />

this letter should have demonstrated<br />

to Zenneck that the display as “Otto<br />

Hahn table” was wrong. Zenneck and<br />

his successors, however, did not<br />

change anything and <strong>for</strong> several<br />

decades the name “Otto-Hahn table”<br />

stuck.<br />

This is how the visitors found<br />

the artifact: It was called workbench,<br />

but displayed devices, which were<br />

never used together on one table.<br />

The paraffin block and the neutron<br />

sources (which were displayed as<br />

reproductions) were used in an irradiation<br />

room, while the chemical<br />

analysis was undertaken in the<br />

chemical laboratory of Straßmann.<br />

The measurement of the radioactive<br />

activities was conducted in the<br />

measuring room. The pairwise<br />

arrangement of the counters on the<br />

table had no scientific grounding, but<br />

gave the whole thing a wonderful<br />

symmetry. That the measurements<br />

would have been impossible if set<br />

so closely to the neutron source<br />

was never mentioned in one of the<br />

museum texts. [36]<br />

Otto Hahn was in the museum in<br />

1963 <strong>for</strong> the 25th anniversary of<br />

the discovery. He gave a television<br />

interview to Heinz Haber, a pioneer in<br />

scientific journalism at the time, in<br />

which Hahn told the entire story in<br />

great detail. [9] Hahn emphasized<br />

the contributions and the great teamwork<br />

between himself, Meitner and<br />

Straßmann. A still image from the<br />

movie is now regarded as the moment<br />

Hahn arranges the devices <strong>for</strong> the<br />

museum himself, a legend that is just<br />

as persistent as it is wrong. [37]<br />

In 1972, the chemistry exhibition<br />

was reopened with a new architecture.<br />

In a niche next to a large<br />

model of a uranium atom, the table<br />

stood in a new showcase. The marble<br />

plaque had been removed, but the<br />

sign “ Arbeitstisch von Otto Hahn”<br />

(workbench of Otto Hahn) had<br />

been taken from the old display. Lise<br />

Meitner’s contribution to the discovery<br />

still did not occur in the<br />

Deutsches Museum.<br />

Only in 1989, on the occasion of<br />

a major exhibition, a balanced and<br />

correct presentation of Meitner’s and<br />

Straßmann’s contributions was finally<br />

shown in the museum. [15 a)] Subsequently,<br />

the museum worked together<br />

with Meitner’s biographer Ruth Lewin<br />

Sime to present a balanced account of<br />

events.<br />

In December 2012, the object<br />

moved to the exhibition about<br />

museum history. The caption today<br />

tries – with all brevity – to satisfy all<br />

those involved in the decisive experiments,<br />

and the table was officially<br />

renamed Hahn-Meitner-Straßmann<br />

table or simply nuclear fission table. It<br />

will be presented in the new permanent<br />

exhibition on chemistry from<br />

2020 onwards.<br />

Conclusion: The responsibility<br />

of the museum curators<br />

For the majority of visitors, it can be<br />

assumed that they see the development<br />

of nuclear power, with all its<br />

consequences <strong>for</strong> the world, as more<br />

important than the exact story of its<br />

discovery. The table is presented as an<br />

icon of the history of science and is at<br />

the same time an arranged art object<br />

whose aura is nourished by its almost<br />

altar-like <strong>for</strong>m. The global technical<br />

and political significance of nuclear<br />

fission certainly served as an amplifier<br />

<strong>for</strong> the object’s glory, but was never<br />

described in the exhibition. How did<br />

the reputation of the acting persons<br />

change over time?<br />

Energy Policy, Economy and Law<br />

The <strong>Nuclear</strong> Fission Table in the Deutsches Museum: A Fundamental Discovery on Display ı Susanne Rehn-Taube

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