Louis Turner’s Review of Published Work on Nuclear Fission, 1934-1940.

With a List of Turner’s References (Below)

JF Ptak Science Books  Reference Tool

I’ve found this article¹ by physicist Louis A. Turner to be very helpful over the years. He was an I-was-there guy (and actually an I-am-here guy) who wrote a stuccato article on the history of nuclear fission which was top heavy in references, and did so in 1940, just before the clamp came down on publication on the topic. Certainly there are other more modern efforts in this area that are far more detailed, but few have managed to do so good a job in as limited space as Turner, which the fabulous John A. Wheeler recognized as a “great and timely” review².

Notes:

1. Louis Turner. “Nuclear Fission.” Lancaster: American Physical Society, 1940. An article in the Reviews of Modern Physics, vol 12/1, January 1940, pp 1-30 of an issue of 85pp Original orange wrappers. Fine condition. Also contains articles by Seaborg and Zwicky.

2. J.A. Wheeler, “Fission in 1939, the Puzzle and the Promise ” Annual Reviews, 1989.

His 133 references can be read as a succession of one-line histories of the subject (barring the permissions to reproduce the entire article):

1. E. Fermi, Nature 133, 898 1934.

2. E. Amaldi, O. D’Agostino, F. Rassetti and E. Segrè, Proc. Roy. Soc. A146, 483 1934.

3. I. Noddack, Zeits. f. angew. Chimie. 37, 653 1934.

4. O. D’Agostino and E. Segrè, Gaz. Chim. Ital. 65, 1088 1935.

5. I. Curie, H. von Halban and P. Preiswerk, J. de phys. [7] 6, 361 1935; C.R. 200, 1841 1935; 200, 2079 1935.