Two Jewish Scientists, Refugees from Reich, Credited with Development of Atomic Bomb

Two Jewish scientists, refugees from the Reich who are now British subject, are credited for considerable research and development of the devastating Atomic Bomb, the first use of which was made on Japan this morning, as revealed today by President Truman in a White House statement.

The two, according to the British information Service, are the 38-year old Prof. Rudelph Ernet Peierls, who was compalled to leave Germany, and the 41-year old Dr. Otto Robert Frisch, who was born in Vienna and was dismissed from the Hamburg University in 1933 on racial grounds.

Prof. Peierls, the British Information Service said, is today “one of the foremost thecretical physicists in England. He was born in Berlin, left Germany in 1933 when the Nazis came to power, and has lived in England since then. He was one of the original members of the technical committee established on the recommendation of the then Prime Minister Churchill and the British Chief of Staff to direct the work of producing an atomic bomb. He was awarded a Reckefeller Fellowship in 1932, which enabled him to visit Rome and Cambridge, and after moving to England, was sucessively a Research Fellow at Manchester University, carried on experimentation at the Royal Society Mond Laboratory in Cambridge, was appointed to the chair of applied mathematics at Birmingham University and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945.

Dr. Frisch, who was born in Vienna, is credited by the British Information Service as being one of the first to realize the possibility that fission of uranium might lead to development of a “bomb of unprecedented violence.” He has been working on this project since early 1940. Dismissed as a Jew from Hamburg University in 1933, Frisch want to London where he worked for a year on nuclear, physics, then proceeded to the institute of Professor Niels-Bohr in Copenhagen for further research. While there he and his aunt, Professor Lise Meitner, also a refugee from Germany, advanced the principle of “nuclear fision” to explain the behavior of uranium under bombardment by neutrons. He became a British citizen in 1943, and Peierls in 1940.

President Truman, revealing the steps in the perfecting of the Atomic Bomb and indicating that its use may lead to an early end of the war with Japan, said that atomic energy will usher in a new power age supplementing the power derived from coal, oil and falling water. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson also said today that the atomic power holds enormous potentialities for use in peace times as well. He named a committee with the approval of President Truman, to formulate recommednations for the post-war development and utilization of atomic power.