Free Republic

Danish physicist Niels Bohr was a scientific genius who also displayed a coincidental penchant for espionage and intrigue. He employed these skills, along with a bit of science, to foil the Nazi at several turns. His small crusade began in 1933 after the Nazis came to power in Germany. Over the next few years several scientists fled Germany with Bohr’s help. Many escapees went on to work on the Manhattan Project, including Edward Teller, James Franck and Otto Frisch. Some of them stayed with Bohr in Denmark, working at the Bohr Institute until moving elsewhere.

The finding that fission releases huge amounts of energy launched a scientific and military race to understand and use this new atomic source of power Over Christmas vacation in 1938, physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch received puzzling scientific news in a private letter from nuclear chemist Otto Hahn. When bombarding uranium with neutrons, Hahn had made some surprising observations that went against everything known at the time about the dense cores of atoms—their nuclei. Meitner and Frisch were able to provide an explanation for what he saw that would revolutionize the field of nuclear physics: A uranium nucleus could...