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