- Hans von Halban
Hans von Halban (
Leipzig ,24 January 1908 -Paris ,28 November 1964 ) was a Frenchphysicist , ofAustria n-Jewish descent.Family
He was descended on his father's side from
Polish Jews , who leftKraków forVienna in the 1850s. His grandfather, Heinrich Blumenstock, was as a senior official in theHabsburg Empire and was enobled byEmperor Franz Joseph I in the 1880s, taking the name ofRitter Heinrich Blumenstock von Halban. (The surname Blumenstock was subsequently dropped by the family, as was the use of 'von' after theSecond World War .) His mother's family were fromBohemia and his great-grandfather, Moritz von Fialka, was a colonel in theAustro-Prussian War of 1866.Although converted to
Catholicism , the family were never religiously observant. Hans Halban was a convincedsecularist .Education and Research
Hans Halban was educated in
Weimar Germany , where his father, Hans von Halban Sr. was a professor ofphysical chemistry . The family moved toZurich in 1928. Halban finished his doctoral studies inphysics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich in 1936. He then worked for a year with thenuclear physicist Niels Bohr at the Institute of Physics,University of Copenhagen .In 1937 Halban was invited to join the team of
Frédéric Joliot-Curie at theCollège de France inParis . The team also includedFrancis Perrin andLew Kowarski . In 1939 the group established the possibility of nuclear chain reactions and nuclear energy production.During the same summer, the government of
Édouard Daladier was able to purchase significant quantities ofheavy water fromNorway and secretly fly it toFrance , for the use of theCollège de France team.Second World War
With the German occupation of
Paris in May 1940, Halban and Kowarski leftParis with the supply ofheavy water , a gramme ofradium and the documentation of their research, as instructed by Joliot-Curie. He escapedFrance , viaClermont-Ferrand andBordeaux , toEngland . He was invited byChurchill 's government to continue his research atCambridge University . In 1942, along with British and otherEurope an "refugee scientists", Halban was sent toMontreal as head of the research laboratories at theMontreal Laboratory , part of the nascentManhattan Project . [ [http://www.cns-snc.ca/history/fifty_years/goldschmidt.html 'How it All Began in Canada - The Role of the French Scientists', Bertrand Goldschmidt] ]Halban was divorced from his first wife, Els (nėe Andriesse, who later married the Czech physicist
George Placzek ), and in 1943 married Aline Strauss (nėe de Gunzbourg), who had escaped France in 1941 with her young son Michel.Following the
Liberation of Paris in August 1944, Halban returned on a visit toLondon andParis , where he saw Joliot-Curie for the first time since leaving France. While he maintained that he did not divulge any nuclear secrets to his previous boss, General Groves, the head of theManhattan Project had Halban removed from his job in Montreal and replaced byJohn Cockcroft . Halban was not allowed to leaveNorth America for a year, nor to work.Post-war
Contrary to his expectations, Halban was not invited back to the
Collège de France after the war. Instead, he was invited back to England byFrederick Lindemann (Lord Cherwell) to lead a team at theClarendon Laboratory inOxford University , closely connected to theAtomic Energy Research Establishment (the Harwell Laboratory).After eight productive years at
Oxford , Halban was invited back to France in 1954 by the Prime Minister,Pierre Mendès-France to direct the building of a nuclear research laboratory atSaclay , outsideParis , which greatly expanded the FrenchCommissariat à l'énergie atomique (Atomic Energy Commission). He took up the appointment in 1955, following his divorce from his wife Aline, who shortly afterwards marriedIsaiah Berlin . TheCEA Saclay laboratory developed the independent French nuclear bomb and oversaw the development of French civil nuclear energy.Last years
Due to ill health, Halban was obliged to retire in 1961. He spent the last three years of his life in
Paris andCrans-sur-Sierre ,Switzerland with his third wife, Micheline (nėe Lazare-Vernier).He died on
28 November 1964 from complications following an unsuccessful heart operation at theAmerican Hospital of Paris , leaving three children: Catherine Maud, from his first marriage, and Pierre (Peter) and Philippe from his second. He is buried inLarchant , nearParis .Recently Discovered Documents
In 1940,
James Chadwick forwarded the work of Halban andLew Kowarski , from Cambridge to theRoyal Society . He asked that the papers be held as they were not appropriate for publication during the war. In 2007, the Society discovered the documents during an audit of their archives. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6709855.stm 'Nuclear reactor secrets revealed', BBC 1 June 2007] ]References
ee also
*
Frédéric Joliot-Curie
*Lew Kowarski
*ZEEP
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