Destroyer of Worlds review: Frank Close’s new book is a welcome rework of the atomic age

Destroying worlds
Frank Close (Allen Lane (UK); Basic Books (US))

When the particle physicist and the Oxford professor emeritus Frank, Frank, learned that he had non -Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2023, his treatment included three weeks of radiotherapy, which gives him a new perspective on the power of radiation.

Later, his 10 -year -old grandson gave him a full account of the Tsar bomb – the nuclear weapon of 50 megatons tested by the Soviet Union in 1961 and, to date, the most powerful human manufacture explosion. For Close, it was time to write a report of nuclear energy and its value as a double -edged sword, one with the power to heal the evils and to kill billions to a stroke.

As a triple winner of the Association of British Science Writers Association, Close knows its subatomic onions. Destroy of worlds: the deep history of nuclear age 1895-1965 Begins with the explosion of the Trinity Test of July 1945 – when detonations ceased to be only chemical. Then he jumps back, covering events like the first atomic imprint on a photographic plate in 1896, and his trip to the nuclear era begins.

There is the history of the 19th century scientist William Crookes who, in mourning and attracted by spiritualism after the death of his brother, observed “luminous green clouds” inside a loaded vacuum tube filled with gas. He assumed that he had synthesized the ectoplasm and proven the existence of ghosts. The theorist George Gamow also appears, with his evidence that uranium could release positively loaded alpha particles without violating the principle of energy conservation.

The main objective of Close, however, is the women physicists who have escaped their share of nuclear projectors. He explains how, despite his doctorate, Lise Meitner was not allowed to enter the only male rooms of the University of Vienna during his mandate. This did not discourage him from working with Otto Hahn to provide x -rays to injured troops during the First World War, or the discovery of element 91, Protacinium, in 1917, five years later, Meitner became the first woman in Prussia Privatdozent (an academic, although not employed) and in 1925 won a Lieben prize.

The book also presents Irene Joliot-Curie, daughter of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie, who inherited the scientific talents of her parents. In 1910, Marie was involved in a scandal for a connection with a married physicist and was denied membership in the French Academy of Sciences. In the fallout, Irene tried to restore the heritage of the family and closed describes the research she did with her husband Frédéric Joliot, in which the pair has maintained (but failed to identify fully) the neutron. The unveiling of this 1932 particle of James Chadwick is “the moment when the science of nuclear physics began”, writes near.

In another section, he sheds light on the assertion of chemist Ida Noddack that the uranium nuclei could be divided into isotopes of lighter elements. When she continued by saying that these nuclei could be divided to create a nuclear fission, she was marked a crank of her peers. Noddack has been targeted, implies, not only as a woman, but as an industrial chemist of a turbine factory that works on the nuclear physics elite guards.

Destroying worlds Try to go up the danger of his title by trying to resolve the mystery of Ettore Majorana, a theoretical physicist described as a genius, “like Galilei and Newton” by Enrico Fermi, creator of the nuclear reactor. Majorana disappeared in 1938, and her absence sparked rumors ranging from suicide to become a monk to flee fascism engulfing Italy. Nearly, like the others before him, cannot get a final response.

Today, a fact is clear through the radioactive fog: it took a lot of mind to release the nuclear genius from its lamp, and for better or for worse, there is no postponement.

George Bass is a writer based in Kent, in the United Kingdom,

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