Part 3: Countries with proven Nuclear Capabilities

Countries with proven Nuclear Capabilities
Nuclear bombs are complex devices.  Having designed one, it is not guaranteed that it would work as expected.  Testing the device is necessary and sophisticated monitoring procedures are followed to ascertain the results of the test. International community is also able to detect and deduce much useful information about any tests that are performed.
The following couple of pictures show different types of tests and where the tests have been performed and the countries responsible.

Notice that the yield of the tests has been 510 MT which is almost 100 times all the bombs used in WWII
The nuclear arsenal is huge.  At the peak of the arms race - in 1970s - USSR and USA had about 80,000 warheads.  Assuming a warhead of 1 MT explosive capacity that is 80,000 MT of TNT equivalent or 16,000 times the bombs used in WWII.  This is more than sufficient to destroy all population centres in the world.

Part 2: Development and Testing of the Hydrogen Bomb

Development and Testing of the Hydrogen Bomb

Uranium and plutonium fission bombs have an upper limit of about 500 kT of TNT equivalent for the maximum explosive energy that they can deliver. On the other hand, a fusion bomb can deliver much more explosive energy.  Most nuclear bomb arsenals now have fusion or H-bombs.

Edward Teller was the scientist at Los Alamos, NM who was very  enthusiastic about the development of H-Bomb even during the phase when everybody was working on getting the fission bomb going. After WWII ended in 1945, USA was the only country with nuclear capability and the work on new and bigger bombs did not receive much support.  However, the Soviet Union tested their fission bomb in 1949 and this event triggered the race to have bigger and better bombs. USA and USSR started work on the H-Bomb.
Initial designs used liquid deuterium which made the bomb too heavy and difficult to be delivered to the target.  H-Bombs with Lithium Deuteride were much better.  The largest H-Bomb ever tested was by USSR in October 1961, the Tsar Bomba, and produced more than 50 MT of energy.

 In the staged design, the fission primary creates energy in the form of powerful X-rays which are focused on to the secondary fusion stage.  Ablation of the tamper surrounding the secondary stage contributes greatly to the pressure that squeezes the secondary. A spark plug in the secondary stage provides yet more compression of the LiD core.

The main reactions in the fusion bomb relate to the production of tritium by neutron bombardment of lithium-6.  Tritium and deuterium fuse to produce 17.59 MeV energy.  Lithium-7 (93% of natural lithium) also produces tritium and increases the yield of an H-Bomb by significant amount.

Part 1:The Fission Bomb based on U-235 and Pu-239.

The Fission Bomb based on U-235 and Pu-239.

On Microbial Antagonism, Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance

I am giving a course on Great Scottish Scientists at Strathclyde University and just started my talk on Alexander Fleming - who discovered penicillin in 1928.

The history of infectious diseases is fascinating.  Look closely at how life operates in nature and one can't help but marvel at the complex way different lifeforms interact. The delicate balance among species in nature must not be disturbed; something mankind is doing without regard to consequences. Come to think of it - we humans do a lot of things which can only be called irresponsible - but that is another story.

All life forms in nature operate on the same principle; it is the fight for survival.  Two essentials for survival are nutrients and space and this is what they all compete for.  From humans to microbes - it is the same struggle. Compete to survive!  Sometimes clever associations are formed for mutual benefits - ecosystems operate that way.  You break the chain by removing one species and part of the system collapses.

Historically, humans have suffered various forms of diseases caused by bacteria and viruses (microbes).  At times 50% of the population in Europe died because of rampant infections.  Louis Pasteur confirmed that such infectious diseases are caused by microbes whose sole aim appears to wish to increase their numbers and if humans could help them, then so be it.  Edward Jenner successfully developed vaccinations against smallpox and vaccination has proved to be very effective in controlling some diseases. Joseph Lister made surgery so much safer by using antispetics like phenol and alcohol.

But that is only a limited success.  Harmful bacteria lurk everywhere - from rose bushes to rusted nails.  Even human bodies harbour harmful bacteria which attack when the system is in a weakened state.

Let us not get it wrong - bacteria and viruses do not only attack and harm humans or big life forms.  They are fighting with each other with equal intensity.  Bacteria grow rapidly and need the resources - other microbes which come in their way have to watch out.  The best way to deal with the situation is by chemical means - produce chemicals that are toxic to invading bacteria.  This has been happening throughout the nature.  Plants produce such chemicals to fight microbial attacks, fungii do it, bacteria do it and we humans do it as well.
In 1922, Alexander Fleming discovered Lysozyme in human mucas, tears; in egg white and in all sort of places.  Lysozyme, as the name suggests, is an enzyme that lyses (dissolves) bacteria; but it only effects a few of them.

But what about using the chemicals that microbes produce to fight other microbes.  If we can find the right chemical that kills the infection-causing bacteria then we can use it to control the infection. Bacterial antagonism can really be put to good use.   Of course, the chemical must be tolerated by the human body and not be toxic so as to harm us as well. Gramicidin discovered in 1936 by Rene Dubos was one such chemical - good to kill bacteria but also toxic to humans - so no use to us.
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928.  It is produced by the fungus penicillin notatum and the best source was found to be a cantaloupe in Illinois, USA!  Penicillin was found to be effective against gram positive bacteria (these are bacteria that have a particular type of membrane wall structure) and was effective in killing lot of infection causing microbes - pneumonia, meningitis and a whole lot more.  Penicillin is also tolerated by human body very well and this was to become an ideal weapon for fighting infections.
We call this class of chemicals antibiotics.
Streptomycin is another anitbiotic that was discovered by Selman Waksman in 1943 and it was very effective in fighting tuberculosis.

1940s and 50s were really the golden age of antibiotics.  Many more were discovered or synthesized, mainly derivatives of penicillin.  Penicillin alone saved millions of lives.

The thing about life is that there is never a final chapter.  Bacteria don't like getting killed this way and we soon started to see resistant strain of bacteria showing up.  The resistant strain are not affected by the antibiotic any more and we go back to either finding a new antibiotic that is effective in killing the bacteria or have the problem of reverting back to pre-antibiotic age when infections were a real problem.
Bacteria are great in producing resistant strains.  They have survived billions of years because they can quickly and efficiently adapt to changing environments. They multiply fast - so population of resistant bacteria builds up rather quickly. Bacteria mutate frequently and then they have at their disposal clever schemes for defeating the antibiotic attacks.  Bacteria can produce enzymes that breakdown the antibiotic molecules making them ineffective or they can cover the region where antibiotic would bind to the cell.  They also exchange resistant genes with other bacteria in the vicinity and spread the resistant genes very efficiently.

It is thus an ongoing war.  We have to keep inventing/discovering new antibiotics - stronger and stronger ones to fight the resistant strains. Something, we have not done very well for the past 40 years or so.  Drug companies did not see much money in this pursuit and governments also got complacent.  But now the problem of resistant bacteria is such that people are waking up to the reality - Alexander Fleming warned about this in 1945 and we all could see this coming but not much was done in the interim.

Even more complicated situation has arrived in the form that many bacterial strains are resistant to several antibiotics with some now resistant to all known antibiotics.  We soon will come full circle here.

In the highly developed societies with good hygiene and clean environment, people do not normally suffer many minor infections.  This also means that they do not develop immunities the same way as societies in the past, who were exposed to many more microbes as routine, did. We also live in much more crowded cities and we travel more. All this can spread infections quickly and efficiently.  When an infection strikes, we shall be less well prepared and the death rates will be correspondingly higher.

The prognosis is not good.

Scottish Nobel Prize Winners (updated January 2022)

Scotland is a small country but its contributions in sciences and other fields have been disproportionately large.  This is evidenced by the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to people of Scottish origin or who have done their main work while in Scotland. In the following, I have collected brief biographies of the Scottish Nobel Laureates.   

ScienceforAll is a programme to promote science awareness in the community through talks on a variety of science related topics.  I started the programme in 2006 at the time of my retirement from Glasgow University. I continue to be associated with GU as an honorary fellow.  Further information about the past activity of the programme is available at

http://ektalks.blogspot.com

ektalks@yahoo.co.uk

About Nobel Prizes

Alfred Nobel (1833 - 1896), a Swedish industrialist, amassed a fortune during his lifetime.  He earned  most of his wealth from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite  is the most famous.   An article in a French newspaper published an obituary of Alfred Nobel (instead of his brother's)  which disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, US$186 million to establish the five Nobel Prizes.

Nobel's will specified that his fortune be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit to mankind“ in physics, chemistry, peace, physiology or medicine and literature. Since 1901, Nobel Prizes have been awarded annually in the above five disciplines. 

Economic Sciences was added in 1968. 

 

Nobel stated that the Nobel Prizes in Physics should be given "to the person who shall have made the most important 'discovery' or 'invention' within the field of physics.”

2016 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry:
Sir Fraser Stoddart was born in 1942 in Edinburgh and currently works in Northwestern University in Illinois.  He shared the Nobel with Professor Jean-Pierre Sauvage (University of Strasbourg) and Professor Bernard Feringa (University of Groningen).
The Nobel was awarded for their work of creating microscopic controllable machines that are more than 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.  Yet, they operate much-like large scale machinery with rings spinning round axles, components moving back and forth along tracks, platforms that rise and fall.
2016 Nobel Laureates in Physics:
David Thouless was born in 1934 in Bearsden. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Washington.
Michael Kosterlitz was born in 1942 in Aberdeen. He is currently affiliated to Brown University.  Both David and Michael won "this year's Nobel for their theoretical work that discovered a set of totally unexpected regularities in the behaviour of matter, which can be described in terms of an established mathematical concept - namely, that of topology."This has paved the way for designing new materials with novel properties and there is great hope that this will be important for many future technologies."

Sir James W Black Uddingston, Lanarkshire (1924 – 2010)

Scottish doctor and pharmacologist.  He spent his career both as researcher and as an academic at several universities. Black established the physiology department at the University of Glasgow, where he became interested in the effects of adrenaline on the human heart. He went to work for ICI Pharmaceuticals in 1958 and, while there, developed propranolol, a beta blocker used for the treatment of heart disease. Black was also responsible for the development of cimetidine, an H2 receptor antagonist, a drug used in a similar manner to treat stomach ulcers. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988 for work leading to the development of propranolol and cimetidine.

Sir John Boyd Orr  1st Baron Boyd-Orr;  Kilmaurs, Kilmarnock (1880 - 1971)

a Scottish teacher, doctor, biologist and politician; studied at University of Glasgow. Received the 1949 Nobel Peace Prize for his scientific research into nutrition and his work as the first Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He was the co-founder and the first President (1960–1971) of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS)

Sir Alexander Fleming Darvel, East Ayrshire (1881 – 1955)

Discoverer of Penicillin  Nobel Prize 1945
Full Biography available here

Arthur Henderson   Glasgow (1863 - 1935)

A British iron moulder and Labour politician. He was the first Labour cabinet minister, the 1934 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and served three terms as the Leader of the Labour Party. He was popular among his colleagues, who called him "Uncle Arthur" in acknowledgement of his integrity, devotion to the cause and imperturbability. He was a transition figure whose policies were closer to the Liberal Party for the trades unions rejected his emphasis on arbitration and conciliation and thwarted his goal of unifying the Labour Party and the trades unions.

Richard Henderson (1945 - ...) was born in Edinburgh.  Awarded 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for electron microscopy of biological molecules.  Shared the prize with Joachim Frank and Jacques Dubochet.

Sir Peter W Higgs   Newcastle upon Tyne  (1929 -   )

British theoretical physicist, 2013 Nobel Prize laureate and emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh where he has stayed since 1954. He is best known for his 1960s proposal of broken symmetry in electroweak theory, explaining the origin of mass of elementary particles in general and of the W and Z bosons in particular. This so-called Higgs mechanism, predicts the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson (which was often described as "the most sought-after particle in modern physics". CERN announced on 4 July 2012 that they had experimentally established the existence of a Higgs-like boson, but further work is needed to analyse its properties and see if it has the properties expected from the Standard Model Higgs boson. On 14 March 2013, the newly discovered particle was tentatively confirmed to be + parity and zero spin

John J R MacLeod   Clunie, Dunkeld  (1876 - 1935)

Scottish biochemist & physiologist. Studied at University of Aberdeen.  Chief interest in carbohydrate metabolism.

He is noted for his role in the discovery and isolation of insulin during his tenure as a lecturer at the University of Toronto, for which he and Frederick Banting received the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

David McMillan (1968 - ...) was born in Bellshill, Scotalnd.  

David was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis and shared it with Benjamin List.

Sir James Alexander Mirrlees   Kirkcudbrightshire  (1936 - 2018)

Scottish economist and winner of the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Mirrlees was educated at the University of Edinburgh (Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in 1957) & Cambridge (Mathematical Tripos) and PhD in 1964 with thesis title Optimum planning for a dynamic economy). Mirrlees and Vickrey shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Economics "for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information“. His students have included eminent academics and policy makers. 

Sir William Ramsay   Glasgow (1852 - 1916)

Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air" (along with his collaborator, Lord Rayleigh, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics that same year for their discovery of argon). After the two men identified argon, Ramsay investigated other atmospheric gases. His work in isolating argon, helium, neon, krypton and xenon led to the development of a new section of the periodic table.  Named the gas, which is inert, with the Greek word for "lazy", "argon"

In the following years, he discovered neon, krypton, and xenon.  He also isolated helium which had been observed in the spectrum of the sun but had not been found on earth. In 1910 he also made and characterized radon.

Ronald Ross  Almora, India (1857 - 1932)  (Not sure about) 

Indian-born British medical doctor who received the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on malaria. His discovery of the malarial parasite in the gastrointestinal tract of mosquito led to the realisation that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, and laid the foundation for combating the disease. He worked in the Indian Medical Service for 25 years. It was during his service that he made the groundbreaking medical discovery. In 1926 he became Director-in-Chief of the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases, which was established in honour of his works. 

Sir Alexander R Todd  (1907 - 1997) Baron Todd of Trumpington, Glasgow 

British biochemist whose research on the structure and synthesis of nucleotides, nucleosides, and nucleotide coenzymes gained him the 1957 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

BSc from Glasgow University in 1928. In 1955, he elucidated the structure of vitamin B12, later working on the structure and synthesis of vitamin B1 and vitamin E, the anthocyanins (the pigments of flowers and fruits) from insects (aphids, beetles) and studied alkaloids found in hashish and marijuana. He served as chairman of the Government of the United Kingdom's advisory committee on scientific policy from 1952 to 1964. 

Charles T R Wilson   Glencorse, Midlothian;  (1869 - 1959)

Scottish physicist and meteorologist who received the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the cloud chamber.  In 1893 he began to study clouds and their properties. He worked for some time at the observatory on Ben Nevis, where he made observations of cloud formation. He then tried to reproduce this effect on a smaller scale in the laboratory in Cambridge, expanding humid air within a sealed container. He later experimented with the creation of cloud trails in his chamber caused by ions and radiation. For the invention of the cloud chamber he received the Nobel Prize in 1927.

Laws of Nature, Common Sense and Religion (Part 2)

In Part 1 we had discussed why common sense is fundamentally incapable of explaining and making sense of the world we live in.  Simply, it is a matter of scale.  The world operates at the atomic/molecular level (~0.000001 mm or a nano meter) where particles move near the speed of light (300,000 km/sec) while common sense is built up over centuries from observations made by our senses operating at distances typically greater than 0.1 mm and speeds less than 0.1 km/sec.  Additionally, time scales for understanding fundamental chemical and biological processes are less than a billionth of a second, more than a million times faster than our reaction time.

To understand the working of the natural world using common sense is like trying to understand the geography of the UK by standing at a corner in George Square in Glasgow! An impossible task.

We had built up a whole series of laws by extrapolating what we could observe with our senses - that is until about 500 years ago when technological advances started to extend the limits of our observations. The rest is history; now in the 21st Century, we are truly appreciating the intricacies of the natural world and I believe, correctly formulating the laws governing it - the laws of nature. Theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have made possible the development of new technologies - digital, nano-, bio-, medicine and many others.  Life without these is unimaginable. To somebody living in the 19th Century, the technology today will be science fiction.

Humans like to make sense of things.  With extremely limited empirical information, acquired through our senses, for our ancestors it would have been impossible to explain much of what was happening around us. Natural phenomena like rain, thunder, lightening, tides, storms, earthquakes, motion of heavenly bodies, infectious/mental and other diseases etc. are mediated by causes well outside the range of human perception.  Theories and explanations would be put forward – of course different in different societies – to make sense of such events.  This can give rise to beliefs, customs, rituals, superstitions etc.
Who controls the clockwork-like motion of heavenly bodies; what causes earthquakes and storms? There has to be some almighty, omniscient being looking over the working of nature, controlling everything happening on the Earth.   
Reproduction and death were mysteries.  What happens after death would be a great puzzle.  Losing a loved one for ever is difficult and it would be natural to assume that he/she comes back to life again at some other place and time. Alternately, after death the person would go to some other unknown world where he/she will have access to all the comforts and good life, may be not available when alive.  
A mind full of a large number of unanswerable questions is very receptive to any suggestion that can even partially reduce the bewilderment.  

In distant past humans, with nomadic lifestyle, did not have a great deal of interaction with others.  They were preoccupied with the problems of survival - finding food and shelter was more important than worrying about the philosophical questions of how and why of things.  As humans started to settle in communities - particularly after discovering agriculture - they started to face a whole set of new problems.  In a community, one has to live in close proximity with the neighbours, there is more time to reflect on the natural phenomena around you and people would be living longer so there would be more continuity between generations.  Some sort of tradition will begun to be defined.  

Having evolved from the apes and with the history of struggle to survive, human nature would have the tendency to be selfish - hoarding of food and providing comfort to the family must have been of utmost importance. Physical strength would help to grab more land for growing food and to ensure security.  How does a community survive when everybody is fighting for a bigger share of whatever is available?  There is no point if the mightiest kills all the neighbours; then we are back to nomadic lifestyle. One needs a system of government and rules of conduct and, of course, punishment.      

If I am an intelligent person then I could exploit the situation by solving all the problems in one stroke.  I would attribute all the natural phenomena to an almighty who is benevolent by giving us rain for growing food, wood for making our huts, cows for milk etc. but will punish our collective bad behaviour by bringing storms, earthquakes, diseases and other natural calamities.  Someone who will nourish us but also punish us. He will also tell us how to behave in the community.  This code of conduct will be given to the community through a medium - somebody who can communicate with the almighty being.  Humans are too ignorant and too frail to question what the almighty decides - they must accept without question what is being decided for them.  They must have faith - blind faith is better as this makes the implementation of rules easier ensuring stability of the society. 
We have religion with an almighty God who we must try our best to please.  We have to have a prophet who can bring the message and the priests who can interpret the word of God for the common man.

Let us face it, most of the humans are not that clever.  They are already confused with what is happening around them in nature and about their safety and well-being.  A good lazy way for them will be to follow the code of conduct - it comes with the additional promise of good life after death. To keep reminding the community about the rules of conduct, we have to have beliefs, rituals and superstitions  - if faith is strong then all these make good sense - the main thing is not to question, just follow.

Of course, different regions will have their own unique way of describing God and the rules of conduct, rituals etc.  It does not really matter as nobody is there to question?  If one falls out of line - faith is shaken - then the community can take care of that by removing the unfaithful altogether. The good of the community is paramount and the chief priest can always decide what God wants - he has a direct line to Him.
One can have one God or several Gods looking after different issues. You can have unwritten code of conduct, everything is verbal (easier to modify) or you can have one book or several describing the will of God.  One does not even have to have a God - it could be just an energy field or an abstract being - who is somehow passionately concerned about the earthlings and their welfare.  As long there is unquestioning faith, the system can and has worked.  And it has worked for several millenia.

The question is how do the laws of nature (derived from the empirical evidence) and religion (needed historically to make sense of things) live side by side.  Things will be straightforward but for the idiosyncrasies of the human mind.  We shall leave this for the next installment (Part 3).

The Curie Family - A remarkable Story (Part 2: Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie)

Marie and Pierre Curie started the new discipline of radioactivity. 

(Part 1 may be reached here).  Attempts to understand this strange and puzzling phenomenon and the source of energy in radioactive decays engendered the field of Nuclear Physics. Marie Curie and other pioneers like Ernest Rutherford worked and studied naturally occurring radioactivity but nobody was thinking about producing new radioactive nuclides not found in nature - producing artificial radioactive elements.  This would really be a "Holy Grail".  Already natural radioisotopes had shown their effectiveness in medicine, chemistry and research.  Artificially produced radioisotopes would be a game changer.

This is exactly what Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curies achieved and were immediately recognized by the award of the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Their journey to stardom was not without setbacks and they missed two certain opportunities of being the first to make groundbreaking discoveries which earned Chadwick (discovery of the neutron) and Anderson (discovery of the positron) the 1935 and 1936 Nobel awards respectively.

Irene and Frederic were two very different personalities.  Irene grew in the shadow of her mother Marie Curie.  She developed an intuitive feeling about radioactivity, went to Stockholm in 1911 for the Nobel award ceremony, accompanied Marie Curie during her American trip  where they received a charmed welcome.  Irene had helped Marie during the first world war with X-ray work saving lives of thousands of soldiers and joining the Radium Institute to work on her doctorate to study the radiation from polonium-210. Irene was cut-out for achieving great things - she was intelligent, head strong and very hard working.
Frederic, three years younger than Irene, came from an engineering background and in December 1924 when he was hired by Marie Curie, Fred was doing national service, had no serious physics qualifications. Frederic was a gregarious and outgoing young man who found Irene somewhat enigmatic.
They soon started to like each other and despite Marie Curie's serious reservations, got married in October 1926 and adopted the name Joliot-Curie.
Irene and Frederic made a great team.  They were immensely helped by having strong alpha particle fluxes from the polonium source that Marie curie had collected at the Radium Institute. Frederic also turned out to be very good with instruments and had sensitive detectors like ionisation chambers and cloud chambers for detecting particles.

Discovery of the neutron:

Chadwick concluded that Bothe-Becker radiation consisted not of gamma rays but of neutral particles of the same mass as the proton, i.e., neutrons.  Joliot-Curies had done the right experiment but their interpretation robbed them of being the first to discover the neutron.

Discovery of the Positron:
Joliot Curies had a very sensitive cloud chamber.  During their studies of cosmic rays, they observed positron tracks in their films.  They interpreted the positron tracks as due to negative electrons which had been scattered in the backward direction.

This is a picture of one of the first positron tracks observed by Anderson in 1933. It was taken in a cloud chamber in the presence of a magnetic field of 2.4 Tesla pointing into the paper (so the particle paths are curved to the left). The cloud chamber (17x17x3 cm) contained a gas supersaturated with water vapour. In the presence of a charged particle (such as a positron), the water vapour condenses into droplets - these droplets mark out the path of the particle. 

The band across the middle is a lead plate, 6 mm thick, which slows down the particles. The radius of curvature of the track above the plate is smaller than that below. This means that the particle is travelling more slowly (23 MeV) above the plate than below it (63 MeV), and hence it must be travelling upwards. From the direction in which the path curves one can deduce that the particle is positively charged. That it is a positron and not a proton can be deduced from the long range of the upper track - a proton would have come to rest in a much shorter distance (~5 mm) 
Carl Anderson won the 1936 Nobel Prize for Physics for this discovery.  

Picture taken from C.D. Anderson, Physical Review 43, 491 (1933).

Production of Artificial Radioactive Elements:

"With the neutron, we were too late; with the positron, we were too late; now we are in time"  ... Frederic Joliot Curie, Jan 1934

Discovery of Nuclear Fission  
Yet again Irene and Frederic missed the opportunity to get credit for their pioneering experiments in the observation of the fission of uranium.

Irene and Frederic had strong views about atomic weapons, peace, women's rights and had overt communist leanings.  Their views lost them favour with the politicians and to some extent with the scientific establishment, particularly in France.

Frederic was a true patriot. Pretending to be busy with his research in nuclear physics, he risked his life by using his lab to manufacture explosives and radio equipment for the Resistance. After the liberation of France, he was appointed director of the National Center for Scientific esearch. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences.  Soon thereafter he became head

of the French Atomic Energy Commission. His task was to make France a world leader in the nuclear industry. Irène became not only a commissioner but also the director of the Radium Institute. 

 But the Joliot-Curies' political activities led to their downfall. In spring 1942 Fred had secretly joined the French Communist party, at that time a leading anti-Nazi force. Although Irène never became a member, she sympathized with many movements in which French Communists took a lead, including support of equal rights for French women.

At the height of the Cold War, Fred was dismissed from his position at the French Atomic Energy Commission. A few months later Irène also lost her post as commissioner.