person:otto hahn

  • Informatique, astronomie ou chimie : toutes ces inventions de femmes attribuées à des hommes - Politique - Numerama
    https://www.numerama.com/politique/469570-informatique-astronomie-ou-chimie-toutes-ces-inventions-de-femmes-a

    Le Wi-Fi, la fission nucléaire ou le pulsar : quel est le point commun entre ces inventions ? Elles ont toutes été créées par des inventrices, éclipsées dans l’ombre de leurs confrères masculins. Nous rappelons leur histoire ce 8 mars 2019.

    Où sont les femmes dans les technologies et les sciences ? Dans l’ombre de leurs homologues masculins, pour nombre d’entre elles. À l’occasion de la journée internationale des droits des femmes, le 8 mars 2019, nous avons décidé de revenir sur le parcours d’inventrices éclipsées par l’Histoire, dont les exploits ont été notamment attribués à des hommes.

    On parle d’effet Matilda pour désigner la manière dont la contribution de nombreuses femmes scientifiques a été minimisée, voir attribuée à des confrères masculins.

    Son manuscrit en atteste encore aujourd’hui : Ada Lovelace, née en 1815 et décédée à 37 ans, a réalisé le premier programme informatique. Entre 1842 et 1843, la comtesse traduit en anglais un article du mathématicien Federico Luigi, qui décrit la machine analytique de Babbage. Sur les conseils de ce dernier, elle va enrichir cette traduction avec ses propres notes, dont le volume est plus imposant que le texte de départ.

    Dans la note G, elle présente un algorithme particulièrement détaillé. Ce travail est considéré comme le premier programme informatique du monde, rédigé dans un langage exécutable par une machine. Charles Babbage, qui a consacré sa vie à la construction de cette fameuse machine analytique, a bien bénéficié du travail sur l’algorithme mené par Ada Lovelace.
    Ada Lovelace. // Source : Wikimedia/CC/Science Museum Group (photo recadrée)
    Hedy Lamarr et le Wi-Fi

    On ne doit pas seulement à Hedy Lamarr, actrice autrichienne naturalisée américaine, une trentaine de films. L’inventrice, née en 1914 et décédée en 2000, a aussi joué un autre rôle important dans l’histoire de nos télécommunications. Le brevet qu’elle a déposé en 1941 (enregistré l’année suivante) en atteste encore : Hedy Lamarr avait inventé un « système secret de communication » pour des engins radio-guidés, comme des torpilles. La découverte, à l’origine du GPS et du Wi-Fi, était le fruit d’une collaboration avec George Antheil, un pianiste américain.

    Le brevet ainsi déposé permettait à l’Armée des États-Unis de l’utiliser librement. La technologie n’a pourtant pas été mobilisée avant 1962, lors de la crise des missiles de Cuba. La « technique Lamarr » a valu à l’actrice un prix en de l’Electronic Frontier Foundation… en 1997.
    Hedy Lamarr en 1944. // Source : Wikimedia/CC/MGM (photo recadrée)
    Alice Ball et le traitement contre la lèpre

    Pendant 90 ans, l’université d’Hawaï n’a pas reconnu son travail. Pourtant, Alice Ball a contribué au développement d’un traitement efficace contre la lèpre au cours du 20e siècle. Cette chimiste, née en 1892 et morte en 1916 à l’âge seulement de 24 ans, est devenue la première afro-américaine diplômée de cet établissement. Plus tard, elle y est devenue la première femme à enseigner la chimie.

    Alice Ball s’est penchée sur une huile naturelle produite par les arbres de l’espèce « Chaulmoogra », réputée pour soigner la lèpre. En isolant des composants de l’huile, elle est parvenue à conserver ses propriétés thérapeutiques tout en la rendant injectable dans le cops humain. Décédée avant d’avoir eu le temps de publier ses travaux, Alice Ball est tombée dans l’oubli tandis qu’Arthur L. Dean, le président de l’université d’Hawaï, s’est attribué son travail.
    Alice Ball (1915). // Source : Wikimedia/CC/University of Hawaii System
    Grace Hopper et le premier compilateur

    En 1951, Grace Hopper a conçu le premier compilateur, c’est-à-dire un programme capable de traduire un code source (écrit dans un langage de programmation) en code objet (comme le langage machine). Née en 1906 et décédée en 1992, cette informaticienne américaine a fait partie de la marine américaine où elle s’est hissée au grade d’officière générale.

    Pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, elle a travaillé sur le Harvard Mark I, le premier grand calculateur numérique construit aux États-Unis. Le mathématicien John von Neumann est présenté comme celui qui a initié l’un des premiers programmes exécutés par la machine. Grace Hopper faisait pourtant partie de l’équipe des premiers programmateurs du Mark I.
    Grace Hopper (1984). // Source : Wikimedia/CC/James S. Davis (photo recadrée)
    Esther Lederberg et la génétique bactérienne

    Cette spécialiste de microbiologie était une pionnière de la génétique microbienne, une discipline croisant la microbiologie (l’étude des micro-organismes) et le génie génétique (l’ajout et la suppression de l’ADN dans un organisme). La génétique microbienne consiste à étudier les gènes des micro-organismes.

    Esther Lederberg est née en 1922 et décédée en 2006. Elle a découvert ce qu’on appelle le « phage lambda », un virus qui infecte notamment la bactérie E.coli. Le phage lambda est très étudié en biologie et il est utilisé pour permettre le clonage de l’ADN. Esther Lederberg l’a identifié en 1950. Elle collaborait régulièrement avec son mari Joshua Ledeberg : c’est lui qui a obtenu le prix Nobel de médecine en 1958, récompensant ces travaux sur la manière dont les bactéries échangent des gènes sans se reproduire.
    Esther Lederberg. // Source : Wikimedia/CC/Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
    Jocelyn Bell et le pulsar

    En 1974, le prix Nobel de physique est remis à l’astronome britannique Antony Hewish. Pourtant, ce n’est pas lui qui a découvert le pulsar, un objet astronomique qui pourrait être une étoile à neutrons tournant sur elle-même. Antony Hewish était le directeur de thèse de Jocelyn Bell : il s’est contenté de construire le télescope nécessaire à ces observations. C’est bien l’astrophysicienne, née en 1943, qui a identifié la première le pulsar.

    En 2018, elle a finalement reçu le Prix de physique fondamentale. Elle a choisi d’utiliser les 3 millions de dollars qui lui ont été offerts pour encourager les étudiants sous-représentés dans le domaine de la physique.
    Jocelyn Bell (2015). // Source : Wikimedia/CC/Conor McCabe Photography (photo recadrée)
    Chien-Shiung Wu et la physique nucléaire

    Chien-Shiung Wu, née en 1912 et décédée en 1997, était une spécialiste de la physique nucléaire. En 1956, elle démontre par l’expérience la « non conservation de la parité dans les interactions faibles », au cours de ses travaux sur les interactions électromagnétiques. C’est une contribution importante à la physique des particules.

    Deux physiciens théoriciens chinois, Tsung-Dao Lee et Chen Ning Yang, avaient mené des travaux théoriques sur cette question. Tous deux ont reçu le prix Nobel de physique en 1957. Il faut attendre 1978 pour que la découverte expérimentale de Chien-Shiung Wu soit récompensée par l’obtention du prix Wolf de physique.
    Chien-Shiung Wu en 1963. // Source : Wikimedia/CC/Smithsonian Institution (photo recadrée)
    Rosalind Franklin et la structure de l’ADN

    La physico-chimiste Rosalind Franklin, née en 1920 et décédée en 1958, a joué un rôle important dans la découverte de la structure de l’ADN, notamment sa structure à double hélice. Grâce à la diffraction des rayons X, elle prend des clichés d’ADN qui permettent de faire cette découverte. Elle présente ses résultats en 1951 au King’s College.

    Un certain James Dewey Watson assiste à cette présentation. Ce généticien et biochimiste informe le biologiste Francis Crick de la découverte de Rosalind Franklin. En utilisant les photos de la physico-chimiste, ils publient ce qui semble être leur découverte de la structure de l’ADN. En 1953, ils publient ces travaux dans la revue Nature. Ils obtiennent un prix Nobel en 1962, sans mentionner le travail pionnier de Rosalind Franklin.
    Rosalind Franklin. // Source : Flickr/CC/retusj (photo recadrée)
    Lise Meitner et la fission nucléaire

    Nommée trois fois pour recevoir un prix Nobel, cette physicienne autrichienne n’a jamais reçu la précieuse distinction. C’est pourtant une collaboration entre Elise Meitner et Otto Frisch, son neveu, qui permis d’apporter la première explication théorique de la fusion, en 1939.

    La scientifique, née en 1878 et décédée en 1968, n’a jamais reçu du comité remettant la distinction la même estime que celle que lui portaient ses collègues. En 1944, le prix Nobel de chimie fut donné à Otto Hahn, chimiste considéré à tort comme le découvreur de la fission nucléaire.
    Lise Meitner (1906). // Source : Wikimedia/CC (photo recadrée)
    Katherine Johnson et la navigation astronomique

    L’action déterminante de Katherine Johnson dans les programmes aéronautiques et spatiaux de la Nasa a fait l’objet d’un film, Les Figures de l’ombre. Née en 1918, cette physicienne et mathématicienne a calculé de nombreuses trajectoires et travaillé sur les fenêtres de lancement de nombreuses missions. Véritable « calculatrice humaine », elle a vérifié à la main des trajectoires de la mission Mercury-Atlas 6, qui a envoyé un homme en orbite autour de la Terre.

    En 1969, elle calcule des trajectoires essentielles lors de la mission Apollo 11. C’est à cette occasion que des humains — des hommes — se sont posés pour la première fois sur la Lune. En 2015, elle est récompensée et reçoit la médaille présidentielle de la Liberté.
    Katherine Johnson en 1966. // Source : Wikimedia/CC/Nasa (photo recadrée)

    #femmes #historicisation #effet_Matilda #sexisme #discrimination #invisibilisation #science

  • Gregory Klimov. The Terror Machine. Chapter 11
    http://g-klimov.info/klimov-pp-e/ETM11.htm

    King Atom

    “Siemens in Arnstadt: that’s under your control, isn’t it?”

    “Yes.”

    “Read this.”

    The head of the Administration for Industry handed me a code telegram struck across diagonally in red to indicate that it was secret. It read: ’Electronic measuring instruments discovered. Object of use unknown. Suspect atom research. Awaiting instructions. Vassiliev.’

    Colonel Vassiliev was the S. M. A. plenipotentiary at the Siemens works in Arnstadt, as well as the director of the scientific research institute for television, which was attached to the works. He was an experienced and reliable man: if he mentioned ’atom research’ he had reason for doing so. I held the telegram in my hand, waiting for Alexandrov to say more.

    “We must send someone there. As the works is under your direction it would be best if you went yourself,” he said.

    “It would be as well to take someone from the Department for Science and Technique with me,” I observed.

    Half an hour later the deputy head of the Department for Science and Technique, Major Popov, and I left Karlshorst for Thuringia. We reached Arnstadt just before midnight, and went straight to Colonel Vassiliev’s house, right opposite the works. He had been phoned that we were coming, and he and his assistant were waiting for us.

    “What have you discovered, Comrade Colonel?” Major Popov asked.

    “Let’s go to the works at once and you’ll see for yourself,” Vassiliev said.

    Accompanied by the commander of the works guard we made our way through the darkness to the far end of the yard, to the warehouse for raw materials and finished production. A guard challenged us outside; and inside, before a sealed door, we found a second armed guard. When the seal was removed we passed into a great warehouse packed with half-assembled electrical equipment: unfinished war production-a scene common to all the German factories immediately after the war.

    Vassiliev halted beside several large, long wooden cases. They contained enormous glass utensils with spherical swellings in their middle; they were packed with great care, and held by special clamps.

    The equipment was similar to the ordinary cathode tubes used in oscillographs, but was much bigger. It was an easy deduction that it was connected with electrical measurement, and the type of insulation used showed that it was intended for high-tension current of enormous voltage, such as is employed in cyclotrons for experiments in atom-splitting. One of the pieces had a special attachment for taking photo of the process. Judging by its construction it was not intended for measuring continuous charge, but a single, sudden, enormous application of current.

    The cases were marked: ’With great care, glass’, but we vainly looked for any indication of where they had come from or whom they were consigned to. They bore only indecipherable rows of numbers and letters.

    “How did they get here?” I asked Vassiliev. “They couldn’t have been produced in this works.”

    He only shrugged his shoulders.

    Next morning we opened an official inquiry. All the people who might be expected to have some knowledge of the mysterious cases were summoned one by one to Vassiliev’s office. The warehouse men knew nothing, for the cases had not been opened on delivery to the warehouse, and had lain until Vassiliev had discovered them. The technical staff said the instruments had not been produced in Arnstadt, but had probably come with other material from the Telefunken and Siemens chief works in Berlin. We felt convinced that they did not even know precisely what instruments they were being asked about.

    We decided to send a wire direct to Karlshorst, asking for the help of experts from the Special Group. The Special Group is the highest Soviet organization for scientific research in Germany, and is attached to the M. V. D. Department for Science and Technique in Potsdam. They have full powers to make direct contact at once, if necessary with all the scientific research organizations in the Soviet Union.

    It did not surprise us to find the mysterious apparatus in the Siemens warehouse at Arnstadt. During the later years of the war all the large German works shifted their industrial plant and established branches and depots in areas less subject to air attack. Moreover, immediately before the capitulation the more valuable installations and stores of raw material were removed and secretly deposited in various remote parts. We often came across most interesting material in the least expected places.

    It was of great importance to find out who had ordered this apparatus to be made, and whom it was intended for. To discover this, we must first ascertain where it had been produced. Only a very few German works could have made it, the most important of these being at Siemensstadt, in the British sector of Berlin. That was beyond the scope of our authority - at least, officially.

    On the other hand, the Telefunken works were at Erfurt, and they were concerned with producing huge transmitter valves for broadcasting stations. Telefunken-Erfurt was perfectly able to handle such a contract. Moreover, the technical directors at Erfurt were in constant business contact with Siemensstadt, and had a pretty good idea of all that went on in other Telefunken works. There we should find the threads linking up with the mysterious apparatus at Arnstadt.

    We decided that Colonel Vassiliev should await the arrival of the Special Group experts, while Major Popov and I visited the Telefunken works at Erfurt.

    We notified the S. M. A. control officers, Lieutenant-Colonel Yevtikov and Lieutenant Novikov, that we were coming to Erfurt, and found them waiting for us in the former directors’ office. When we explained the reason for our visit they breathed a sigh of relief; they had obviously been expecting one of the regular inquiries into their failure to comply with production plans and reparations deliveries.

    We questioned all the engineers working in the department for transmitter valve production, and came upon several essential clues. Shortly before the capitulation they had executed some special orders for gigantic electrodes and other parts for some quite unknown and completely new type of construction. The constructional plans had come from Berlin, and the parts, when manufactured, were to be sent there, presumably for assembly. The work was strictly secret. When we persisted in asking the origin of the commission and the constructional plans, the technical head of the transmitter valve department said uncertainly: “Berlin-Dahlem ... I think...”

    That was good enough. During the war Berlin-Dahlem had been the headquarters of the secret laboratories for atomic physics engaged in atom-splitting experiments.

    At this stage Colonel Vassiliev telephoned from Arnstadt to report that the Special Group experts had arrived. I knew that Lieutenant-Colonel Yevtikov was a sluggish sort of individual, so I asked Lieutenant Novikov to get reliable men to start a thorough search immediately for anything that could have any connection with the mysterious order, and to place anything found under lock and key and post a military guard over it. Lieutenant Novikov was an energetic and able man, an engineer by profession, who later, when the Telefunken-Erfurt was transformed into a Soviet A. G. company, was appointed chief engineer to the works. While he set to work on the inquiries, Major Popov and I drove back to Arnstadt.

    In Vassiliev’s office we found a group of men who were obviously scientists and thoroughly at home in laboratories and research institutions. Together with them there were several taciturn men in civilian dress, which took no part in the discussion of technical points and kept mainly in the background. But one could see that they were the real bosses: they were the M. V. D. shadows.

    The experts had already examined the mysterious apparatus, and without asking them any questions we felt that they confirmed our suppositions. Major Popov reported on our visit to Telefunken-Erfurt. Now we had the unpleasant feeling that our report was acquiring the features of a judicial interrogation; it was as though the M. V. D. shadows suspected that we might be concealing something. Even in dealings with Soviet officers that institution applies its quite distinctive methods.

    A searching examination of the technical employees at Arnstadt continued all that day. Each individual had to pledge himself in writing to the strictest secrecy. Towards evening the apparatus was all taken to Berlin, under reinforced escort and with the greatest of precautions.

    Accompanied by Major Popov and myself, the Special Group experts went on to Erfurt. Yevtikov had already been ordered not to let anybody leave the works who was likely to be required for questioning.

    The inquiry went on all night: the taciturn men with the pale faces seemed to make no difference between night and day. The inquiry was held in Yevtikov’s office, but he, Major Popov, and I, spent the night in an adjacent room, whence one or another of us was summoned to establish some fact or to give information, as we were well acquainted with the activities of the Telefunken works. The Special Group acquired not only a mass of fresh material, but also a list of the German scientists and engineers who had been directly concerned with carrying out the secret commission. Once more the threads linked up with the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute and the secret laboratories for atomic physics in Berlin-Dahlem.

    One of the leading German atomic physicists was Dr. Otto Hahn, a pupil of Max Planck. A number of the German scientists who had been working in his laboratory fell into the hands of the Soviet authorities after the capitulation and were taken to the Soviet Union, where they were afforded every possibility of continuing their research. Such famous German scientists as Professor Herz and Dr. Arden are now working in Soviet Research Institutes connected with atomic research under the general direction of Professor Kapitza, who is also head of the Supreme Administration for the scientific research organizations attached to the Ministry for Special Weapons.

    By the last few months of the war the Germans had cyclotrons for atom splitting at their disposition. But the catastrophic situation at the fronts and the destruction of the German heavy-water plant in Norway by the R. A. F. forced them to suspend attempts to solve the secret of the atom. Before the final capitulation they scattered all the atom laboratory equipment in spots which seemed safe from discovery. The Soviet authorities set up Special Units to search exclusively for the secret weapons on which Hitler had set such great hopes.

    During the month following our finds at Arnstadt all who had had anything to do with it were once more summoned to Potsdam-Babelsberg, to the headquarters of the Special Group. Somehow or other it had got hold of some valuable clues, both from German scientists working in the Soviet Union and from many others living in the German western zones. At times one cannot but feel admiration at the precision and speed with which the M. V. D. works. It is with good reason that this highly responsible field of research has been en-trusted to it.

    While the Special Group was solving the problem of the Arnstadt equipment the S. M. A. made a further important discovery. From Suslov, the Scientific and Technical Department’s representative for Thuringia, the head of the department, Colonel Kondakov, received a telegram announcing that ’The Levkovich Group has come upon a secret store of equipment whose purpose is unknown’.

    Colonel Levkovich was the head of the Dismantling Group operating in Thuringia. Such discoveries were by no means rare; dismantling teams had more than once come across double walls, with special installations or machinery concealed between them. Because of this a circular had been issued, instructing that all the walls of dismantled works were to be sounded. The dismantlers also searched systematically for plant removed from factories and works immediately before the capitulation.

    Kondakov sent two of his officers to Thuringia immediately. In the abandoned galleries of an unfinished underground factory, situated in a forest, they saw carefully packed apparatus which apparently had been intended for use in connection with very high-tension transformers or discharges such as are required in laboratories researching into the problems of high-tension current.

    They were especially struck by the remarkable scale of this apparatus, and especially the insulation. Although the experts from Karlshorst had never had anything to do with cyclotrons, they thought at once of atomic research, and cabled for experts from the Special Group.

    A few hours later the experts arrived from Babelsberg; their car was escorted by a second containing a force of soldiers in green caps: M. V. D. special troops. One glance at the plant convinced the experts of the significance of the find. A cipher cable was sent to General Pashchin, in the Ministry for Special Weapons at Moscow, and the following day a group of M. V. D. experts left Moscow to take over the plant. As soon as they arrived the area, with a circumference of several miles, was sealed off with M. V. D. guards. From that moment neither the men from Karlshorst nor those of the Special Group from Babelsberg were allowed to visit the area until the entire equipment had been removed to the Soviet Union.

    Later, Colonel Kondakov explained that we had not discovered anything new in the sphere of atomic research in Germany. Similar equipment was being made in the U. S. S. R. before the war, under the supervision of Professor Kapitza. Owing to wartime difficulties, Germany had been unable to conduct the research on any large scale. The purely scientific and theoretical aspects of problems associated with the atom have been known to the scientists of many countries for many years past, and Germany failed to find the solution to the problem of splitting the atom chiefly because of technical difficulties -above all, that of constructing the necessary plant and providing the energy for splitting the atom.

    One must remark on the striking difference between the Soviet and the foreign press in its handling of atomic questions. We - officers from Soviet Russia, who stood on the bounds between two worlds, saw the difference more clearly than anybody else did. While in general the Soviet press maintained an excessive silence, the foreign press was vociferous, and reminded one of a woman going into hysterics at the sight of a mouse. The fuss made over the atom bomb is indicative of fear and shows a lack of sense of reality. In the last resort the atom bomb alone cannot decide the destiny of the world. Man has already produced the atom bomb, and he will always be mightier than the atom.

    “It’s amazing how much fuss is being made over the atom bomb,” Colonel Kondakov remarked one day.

    “Yes, and the reports always come from ’reliable sources’,” his assistant. Major Popov smirked. “Sometimes from circles close to Karlshorst, sometimes ’direct from Moscow’.”

    “To tell the truth, the foreign press knows more than we ourselves do,” the colonel sighed. “Their continual quest for the sensational...”

    His remark was typical of the attitude of responsible Soviet officials. Each of us knew exactly so much as he had to know in order to perform his duties. And the majority of us went to great trouble to know as little as possible. While the world was shivering with atom fever our life pursued its normal course. I am reminded of a comparatively unimportant yet significant incident that occurred in my everyday life about that time.

    Shortly after my return from Thuringia the Administration for Reparations sent me a file containing constructional plans, accompanied by a note: ’We send you the prototype plans for a standard house-cottage intended for workers’ colonies in the Soviet Union, in accordance with reparations Order No... We re-quest you to check the electrical installations for the proposed project and confirm them. We also request you to prepare an overall plan of electrical installations for a total of 120, 000 houses, and to notify us which works are in a position to execute such an order. Petrov: Head of the Electro-Industry Department of the Administration for Reparations.’

    The plans included constructional diagrams for an ordinary German one-family house, consisting of three rooms, kitchen, bathroom, and toilet. In the basement there were a coal cellar and washhouse.

    I and several other engineers studied the plans with much interest. “When we go back to Russia we’ll get a little house like that,” one of us remarked.

    The electrical installations were checked, the plans approved, and the Administration for Reparations sent them on to Moscow for final approval.

    A little later I found the file again on my desk, with an accompanying note: ’On the instruction of the U. S. S. R. Ministry for the Building Industry I request you to make certain requisite modifications in the project. Petrov.’

    Curious to see what improvements Moscow had ordered, I unfolded the plans. To begin with, the washhouse had been abolished; the Ministry considered that the washing could be done just as well in the kitchen. Second, the verandah was eliminated. Quite understandable: the tenants weren’t to loll around on verandahs.

    After the modifications had been made accordingly, the project was returned to Moscow for approval. A few weeks later I found it on my desk yet again, this time accompanied by the laconic remark: ’Please make the necessary alterations. Petrov, ’

    This time the changes were pretty drastic. Without a word of explanation the bathroom and the toilet had been abolished. Every workers’ colony has public baths, so why a bathroom to each house? But the toilet? Apparently the Moscow authorities were of the opinion that such things were unnecessary so long as there were bushes around.

    The plans for electrical installations had been provided with a plentiful crop of thick red question marks. For instance, in the bedroom there were question marks against the wall plug, the bedside lamp to be attached to it, and the cord to enable it to be worked from the bed. The 120, 000 workers’ dwellings had been refashioned to meet the Soviet requirements. The cottages had been turned into ordinary huts. As finally ’modernized’, the project was the subject of bitter jest among the engineers of our department, and none of them expressed any desire to live in such a house.

    From one-fourth to one-third of the budget for the current five-year plan for the ’re-establishment of Soviet Economy’, i. e. some 60 milliard rubles, goes directly or indirectly into atom re-search and development. But if a man, the lord of creation and the creator of the atom bomb, needs to perform his natural functions, let him run to the nearest bush. So the State interest requires!

    In the high summer of 1946 a number of commissions from various Soviet ministries arrived in Karlshorst to inquire into the possibilities of allocating reparations orders and of exploiting the finished production lying in the warehouses of German industrial works. Two representatives from the Soviet Ministry for Shipbuilding invited me to travel with them through the Soviet zone to study the situation on the spot.

    Colonel Bykov, Captain Fedorov, and I set out from Karlshorst to go to Weimar. On the road I got to know my companions quite well. They were both extremely pleasant fellows, and ignored military regulations so far as to use the familiar Christian name and patronymic, rather than the prescribed rank and surname. They were not professional officers but engineers. And besides, they were in the navy; anybody who has had anything to do with seamen knows the difference between the navy and the army.

    On our arrival at Erfurt we put up at the Haus Kossenhaschen, which had been turned into the staff headquarters of the dismantling teams working in Thuringia. We sat in the old-fashioned, oak-paneled hall, talking while we waited to be called to lunch. I had been here often before, so the scene was familiar to me. But my companions had left Moscow only a few days previously, and they were keenly interested in all that was happening.

    “Tell me, Gregory Petrovich, what’s going on around here? Are they preparing for an expedition to the North Pole?” Colonel Bykov asked me in an undertone. The strange inquiry was due to the fact that all the dismantling officers bustling to and from were wearing enormous boots of reindeer hide, although it was a very warm summer day. And these men in fur boots carried sporting guns with them wherever they went, even taking them into the dining hall.

    “No,” I answered. “It’s only that the dismantlers have found a store of German airmen’s arctic equipment somewhere or other, and now they’re enjoying the pleasure of trying it out. And they’ve got their guns with them because they’re going off to hunt immediately they’ve had their dinner.”

    “An amusing lot!” The colonel shook his head. “Haven’t they really got anything else to do?”

    “The position’s rather complicated,” I explained. “The main work of dismantling was finished some time ago now, and the majority of them haven’t anything to do. But they aren’t having a bad time here, so their chief activity in life at present is to drag out whatever they’re doing. As they’re directly under Moscow control, the S. M. A. can’t do anything about it.”

    “In Berlin we were told that many of them have accumulated enough to retire for the rest of their lives,” Fedorov remarked.

    “Recently the S. M. A. Department for Precision Tools did take up one case,” I said. “It involved the director of the State Watch and Clock Works No. 2. He had been sent to Germany to dismantle the watch and clock industry. Soon after his return to Moscow the S. M. A. discovered that while here he had acquired many thousand gold watches and several dozen kilograms of gold illegally.”

    “That certainly should provide for the rest of his life,” Fedorov remarked with conviction in his tone. “If only for a lifelong free lodging.”

    “I doubt whether he’ll get that,” I commented.

    “Why do you?” The captain was astonished.

    “Well, the circumstances were reported to the higher authorities, and they hushed it all up.”

    “But why?” Fedorov still failed to understand.

    “Don’t ask me!” I replied. “Apparently they prefer not to bring such people into disrepute. ’Don’t wash dirty linen in public’, says the old saying. His wasn’t the first case of its kind.”

    “And he’s a Soviet director!” the colonel exclaimed indignantly.

    I could not help smiling bitterly. Nodding towards the dismantling officers bustling about, I said: “In the Soviet Union all these people are either high ministerial officials or factory directors. And hardly any of them are very different from that director I’ve just told you of. You can take my word for it. We in the S. M. A. are getting more and more of that sort of case brought to our notice.”

    There was an awkward silence, broken only when the headwaiter summoned us to the dining hall.

    We spent two days visiting factories and works in the Erfurt district. My companions were especially concerned with orders for special electrical installations in warships, and in particular in U-boats. I was struck by the interest they showed in the life going on around us - I had been more than a year in Germany now, and I was not so impressed by the contrasts as I had been at first.

    Among the works we visited was the Telefunken factory; my companions wanted to find out whether it could undertake reparations orders for naval receiving and transmitting apparatus. As we drove along the drive to the offices the colonel exclaimed: “Look at that, Victor Stepanovich! Tennis courts!”

    Captain Fedorov also stared through the window at several courts surrounded with a high wire-mesh wall. Around the courts there were flowerbeds, and a little square where one could rest. The captain gazed with intense curiosity at the tennis courts, the garden, and the nearby factory buildings, as though the very fact that they were all to be found together within the factory walls was noteworthy in itself.

    In the Soviet Union it is continually being proclaimed that the workers need to have opportunities for rest and recreation within the factory area. But as a rule the idea never gets beyond the proclamation stage, and such facilities are to be found only in a few works which serve as showplaces. But now, in Germany, the two Soviet officers were seeing things, which they had been told at home, were the achievement exclusively of the Soviet system.

    Not far from the office building there were several rows of cycle stands all of them empty.

    “But where are the cycles, Gregory Petrovich?” the captain asked me.

    “Now that’s really too simple!” I retorted. “In Russia, of course.”

    “Oh, of course!” he smiled. “But there must have been a lot here at one time. Almost one per worker.”

    After we had discussed our business with the Soviet control officers and the Telefunken directorate’s representatives, Colonel Bykov turned to me with an unexpected request: “Couldn’t you arrange for us to go over the works? So that we can get to know the labor processes and organization?”

    The technical director was quite willing to take us round. We went right through the production departments, from beginning to end of the process. In a great hall where electrodes were being wound and assembled for wireless valves several hundred women and girls were sitting at tables. The director explained the details, but Colonel Bykov did not listen to him. The colonel had fallen a little way behind, and was unobtrusively surveying the hall.

    His eyes passed slowly over the huge windows, over the high walls, the ceiling, and rested for a moment on the glass partitions that separated one sector from another. As a high ministerial official and head of one of the main departments in the Ministry for Shipbuilding he was well acquainted with working conditions in the Soviet Union, and it was obvious that he was quietly comparing them with conditions in this German works.

    As we were leaving the hall Captain Fedorov drew me back. “Gregory Petrovich,” he said, “how do you like this seat?” He perched himself on one of the seats, all of the same pattern, used by the women workers. It was fitted with a padded backrest, and its height was adjustable.

    “What do you find interesting about that seat, Victor Stepanovich?” I asked him.

    "To start with, it’s comfortable. For a worker it’s absolutely luxurious. But quite apart from that, did you notice the seats they had in the factory office?”

    “No, I didn’t.”

    “They’re exactly the same,” he said with a faint smile. “Directors and workers, they all sit on the same seats. And they’re really comfortable, too.”

    As we went on, the technical director began to complain of the difficulties they met with in regard to labor power; workers tended to come and go as they liked, and this had a detrimental effect on output. “It takes four weeks to train a new worker,” he said. “But many of them don’t stay longer than a fortnight. And absenteeism is very common.”

    “But haven’t you any means of stopping it?” the colonel asked in astonishment.

    The director shrugged his shoulders. “A worker can be away three days without good reason,” he explained. “If he’s away any longer he must obtain a doctor’s certificate.”

    “Then how do you stop slacking and shifting from one works to another?” the colonel asked.

    “If the worker comes within the categories I have just referred to we have no powers of dismissal. On the other hand, if he wishes to throw up his job we can’t make him work,” the director replied.

    “I’m not thinking of dismissal, I’m thinking of the necessity to make a man work,” the colonel persisted. The director stared at him blankly. “I beg your pardon?” he said. The colonel repeated his remark.

    “We have no legal means of compelling a worker to work. We can only dismiss a worker who violates the labor code,” the German answered.

    There was an awkward pause. The worst punishment a German worker could suffer was dismissal. In the Soviet Union dismissal was frequently a worker’s one, unachievable, dream. A Soviet director can deal with a worker entirely as he wishes. He can put a man on a poor and badly paid Job, and he can, or rather must, hand a man over to the law for arriving late, even if it were only a few minutes. But the worker has no right whatever to change his place of work without the director’s agreement.

    Arbitrary absenteeism is liable to lead to imprisonment. We Soviet officers were used to such discipline, and so we could not understand the German director’s impotence. And he for his part was highly astonished at what he evidently regarded as our absurd questions. Two worlds: two systems.

    “You were speaking of the labor code, just now,” the colonel went on. “What labor legislation governing relations between employer and employee is in force today? Laws dating from the Hitler regime?”

    “The German labor code dates mainly from the time of Bismarck,” the German answered. “It has suffered only insignificant modifications since then.”

    “The time of Bismarck?” Bykov sounded incredulous. “But that’s something like seventy years ago....”

    “Yes,” the director answered, and for the first times a look of pride showed in his face. “Germany’s social legislation is one of the most progressive in the world... I mean in Western Europe,” he hurriedly corrected himself as he remembered that he was talking to Soviet officers.

    The colonel looked at the captain. The captain, for his part, looked at me. I was used to this kind of mute dialogue; it was the normal reaction of Soviet people to things that made them think, but which could not be discussed.

    I took advantage of the fact that none of our control officers was near to ask the director why there had been a sudden fall in radio valve production during the last few months. When one inspects a factory it is best to talk with both sides separately.

    “The main reason is the shortage of wolfram and molybdenum wire,” he answered.

    “But you were recently allocated a supply securing the production plan for six months,” I retorted. “Haven’t you received it from Berlin yet?”

    “Yes, Herr Major, but don’t you know...” he muttered in his embarrassment. “Hasn’t Herr Novikov reported to you...?”

    “He’s reported nothing. What’s happened?”

    The director hesitated before answering:

    “We needed the wire so urgently that we sent a lorry to Berlin to fetch it.”

    “Well?”

    “On the way back the lorry was stopped....”

    “What happened to the wire?”

    “Herr Major, our men couldn’t do anything....”

    “But where’s the wire?”

    “As our lorry was approaching Leipzig at night another lorry blocked its way. Armed men with machine pistols forced our driver and the dispatching clerk to get out, and they took over the lorry and drove off. The wire...”

    “Who were the bandits?”

    “They were wearing Soviet uniforms,” he answered reluctantly.

    As we got into our car after leaving the director, Captain Fedorov asked:

    “But who could have been interested in that lorry and its wire? D’you think it was some diversionists trying to sabotage reparations deliveries?”

    “We’re well aware of that kind of diversionary activity,” I told him. “The lorry will be found abandoned in a forest in a day or two, with the wire still on it, but stripped of its tires and battery. I expect that’s what Novikov is hoping for, too. That’s why he hasn’t reported the matter yet.”

    “But who goes in for that sort of thing?” the captain asked.

    “You live here for any length of time and you’ll find out.” I avoided a direct answer.

    From the Telefunken works we drove to a Thiel works for precision instruments and clocks. It was situated in a small village which we had difficulty in finding on a map. There were several other quite large industrial works engaged in armature production in the same village. It lay in a narrow valley between wooded hills, along the sides of which the Thuringian houses, brightly painted clung in rows. It was difficult to believe that this place was a workers’ settlement.

    “It looks more like a sanatorium,” Fedorov remarked, and his voice expressed envy, or regret. “In this country workers live as if they were staying at a health resort.”

    We called on the S. M. A. control officers, who had taken up their residence in the villa of one of the factory owners. As we came away the colonel laughed and said: “Victor Stepanovich, what do you think these brothers of ours are most afraid of?”

    “Lest they should be transferred somewhere else,” the captain replied without stopping to think. And we all understood what he meant by ’somewhere else’.

    People living in the West would never guess what it is that most astonishes Soviet people, especially engineers, on their first visit to a German factory. It might be thought that the Soviet officers would gaze open-mouthed at the enormous buildings, the innumerable modern machines and other technical achievements. But such things have long since lost any power to surprise us. It is rather the western peoples who would be astonished at the size of Soviet factories and the scope of their technical achievement.

    It is not western technique, not western machinery, that are new to us, but the place which man occupies in society and the State. We have to recognize the fact that men in the western system of free development of social relations enjoy far greater rights and liberties, that, to put it simply, they get much more out of life than do the Soviet people of the corresponding social stratum.

    As we were traveling on to our next point of call that evening, not far from Jena a fault developed in our car’s dynamo, and it stopped charging. To avoid running down the battery completely we switched off our headlamps and drove slowly through the night. On one side of the narrow road a steep cliff overgrown with trees towered above us, on the other side the cliff fell away into bottomless darkness. In the most God-forsaken spot of all, in the middle of a gorge, our auto petered out completely. We got out to stretch our legs while the driver examined the engine by torchlight.

    A dark form pushing a cycle loomed out of the darkness.

    “Can you tell us where we are?” I asked the German.

    “You’re at Goethe’s castle,” he answered. “It’s right above your heads.”

    “But is there a village anywhere near?”

    “Yes. You’ll come to a bridge a little way along the road, and there’s a village on the other side of it.”

    “I can’t do anything to it, Comrade Colonel,” our driver reported a moment or so later. “It’ll have to go to a garage.”

    “Now what shall we do? Spend the night in the car?” my companions fumed.

    “Of course not!” I said. “There’s a village not far off. We’ll go there for the night.”

    “God forbid, Gregory Petrovich!” the two sailors exclaimed in horror. “We can’t find a commandatura or an hotel for Soviet officers there.”

    “And very good, too!” I answered.

    “Cut it out!” they objected. “We’re not tired of life yet.”

    “Why did you say that?” It was my turn to be astonished.

    “Have you forgotten where we are? Not a day passes without a murder being committed. It’s been drummed into our heads that we’ve got to take the utmost care. We’ve been told not to let our driver spend a night in a car alone, for he’s sure to be murdered if we do. You know for yourself what things are like.”

    “And where were you told all this?”

    “In Moscow.”

    I couldn’t help laughing. “Well, if that’s what you were told in Moscow, it must be so. But you get a different view of it when you’re close up to it. We shall sleep better in the village than in any commandatura hotel: I guarantee you that. After all, we’ve all got pistols in any case.”

    After long argument they agreed to take the risk of spending the night in a wild and strange village. They told the driver he was to remain in the car, and we set out to walk.

    “But where shall we sleep there?” The captain was still dubious. “You can’t wake people up in the middle of the night and force your way into their house.”

    “Don’t worry, Victor Stepanovich. The very first house we come to will be a hotel. Would you care to bet on it?”

    “But how can you be so sure that it will be an hotel?” Captain Fedorov asked. “Anyway, if you’re right, we’ll open a bottle of cognac.”

    “It’s quite simple. We’re traveling along a country road, and in Germany the hotels are always found in the main street, at the beginning and end of the village. That’s an easy way to win cognac!”

    “All the same, I don’t like it.” The captain sighed mournfully.

    Some ten minutes later a bridge loomed up ahead of us. Immediately beyond it we saw light streaming through the chinks of window-shutters.

    “And now we’ll see who’s right, Victor Stepanovich,” I said, as I shone my torch on to a signboard, depicting a foaming tankard, fixed above the main door. “Here’s the hotel.”

    A few minutes later we were sitting at a table in the bar-parlor. My companions cast suspicious glances around the room, as though they expected to be attacked at any moment. The room was decorated in the Thuringian manner, and had heavily carved dark oak furniture, and antlers on all the walls. The ceiling- and wall-lights were fashioned from antlers, too. At the back gleamed the chromium-plated taps of the bar, and two girls in white aprons stood smiling behind the counter.

    After we had arranged rooms for the night, we ordered hot coffee. From our cases we took bread, sausage, and a bottle of cognac which the captain had brought with him as a ’remedy against the flu’!

    “Ah, Gregory Petrovich, it’s all right to drink, but we’ll be slaughtered like quails later on,” the captain sighed as he drew the cork. “You’ll have to answer for it all to St. Peter.”

    “Would you like me to betray my little secret to you?” I said. “Then you’ll sleep more quietly. I have to do a lot of traveling about on official business, and I’ve driven through Thuringia and Saxony again and again with a fully loaded lorry. In such cases there is a certain amount of danger, and you have to be on your guard. And when evening comes on and I have to look for quarters for the night... do you know what I do?”

    “You make for a town where there’s a commandatura hotel, of course,” the captain answered with the utmost conviction.

    “I did that once; but only once. After that first experience I’ve always tried to avoid towns where there’s a Soviet commandatura and garrison. I deliberately pull up in the first village I come to and spend the night in an hotel.”

    “But why?” Colonel Bykov asked.

    “Because it’s safer that way. During my twelve months in Germany I’ve had to draw and fire my pistol three times... and in every case I had to fire at men in Soviet uniform... out to commit a robbery,” I explained after a pause.

    “Interesting!” the captain said through his teeth.

    “I spent one night in an officers’ hotel at Glachau,” I went on.

    “To be on the safe side I drove the lorry right under my bedroom window. Hardly had I gone to bed when I heard it being dismantled.”

    “Amusing!” the colonel commented.

    “It wasn’t at all amusing to have to chase through the streets in my underclothes and waving a pistol,” I retorted. “I rounded up two Soviet lieutenants and a sergeant, called out the commandatura patrol, and had them arrested. Next morning the commandant told me: ’I quite believe you, Comrade Major, but all the same I shall have to let the prisoners go. I haven’t time for such petty matters.

    Let me give you some good advice for future occasions. Next time, wait till they’ve robbed your car, and then you’ll have evidence to show. Then shoot them out of hand and call us in when you’ve done it. We shall draw up a statement on the affair and be very grateful to you. It’s a pity you were in such a hurry this time.’”

    At that moment a fashionably dressed young woman and a man entered the bar-parlor. They sat down at a table opposite us and lit cigarettes.

    “All very well!” the captain said. “But there’s one thing about this place I don’t like: the people are too well dressed. Look at that fellow sitting opposite us with that dame. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re former Nazis, who’ve hidden themselves away in this lonely spot. And now we’ve come and stirred them up. And did you notice that group of youngsters a little earlier? They came in, stood whispering to one another, and then slipped out again! It strikes me as highly suspicious.”

    “Well, I think the best thing to do is to go to bed,” I proposed.

    “Bed, maybe! But sleep?” the colonel retorted. “I think our first job is to see which side our window looks out on.”

    As soon as we went to our bedrooms upstairs, the colonel and the captain made a security check. They opened and closed the windows and tested the shutters. “We were told they throw hand-grenades through the window,” the captain explained. He went into the corridor and tried to discover whether the adjacent rooms were occupied by members of the Werewolf organization (The organization planned by Nazis to carry on guerrilla resistance and terrorism after the war. - Tr.).

    Finally he tested the door lock. My companions occupied one room, and I had the one next to it. Now, for the first time since I had arrived in Germany, I felt a little dubious. I bolted the door, thought for a moment, then took out my pistol and slipped it under my pillow. After undressing I put out the light and plunged beneath the enormous feather bed.

    The following morning I knocked at my companions’ door to awaken them. I heard sleepy voices, then the bolt was shot back. They were weary and worn out. I gathered that they had sat up till long past midnight, discussing whether they should get into bed dressed or undressed. Now, in the morning sunlight, all their fears and anxieties were dispelled, and they began to pull each other’s leg.

    “Tell us how you went to the toilet in the middle of the night with your pistol at the ready, Victor Stepanovich!” the colonel said, winking at me.

    “Do you know who that well-dressed couple were yesterday evening?” I asked him. “The village shoemaker and his wife. And he’s an old communist, too. I asked the landlord. And you took them for Nazi leaders!”

    We had asked the landlord the previous evening to arrange for a mechanic to help our driver first thing in the morning. When we returned to the car we found them both hard at work. To pass the time, we climbed the steep path up to Goethe’s castle, and were shown over the place by the caretaker-guide. When we returned the car was in order, and before long we were on our way again.

    We journeyed through the length and breadth of Thuringia and Saxony for several days, controlling, sequestrating, requisitioning current production, and allocating orders on behalf of the Administration for Reparations. It was during this trip that I first began to experience an unusual feeling. It made me realize that the year I had spent outside the Soviet Union had not passed without leaving its effect on me. Somehow, a change had taken place within me. I was conscious of that as I worked and lived together with my two naval companions.

    They provided a kind of standard measure against which I could check the process that was going on inside me. As I talked with them I was disturbed to realize that my thoughts and my outlook had been modified by comparison with those of Soviet people. What I felt was not a simple renunciation of what I had believed in favor of something else. It was an enlargement of my entire horizon.

    Sommaire https://seenthis.net/messages/683905
    #anticommunisme #histoire #Berlin #occupation #guerre_froide

  • German Atomic Bomb Project.
    https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/german-atomic-bomb-project
    Atomic heritage Foundation https://www.atomicheritage.org

    “I don’t believe a word of the whole thing,” declared Werner Heisenberg, the scientific head of the German nuclear program, after hearing the news that the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

    Germany began its secret program, called Uranverein, or “uranium club,” in April 1939, just months after German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann had inadvertently discovered fission. Germany had a significant head start over the Manhattan Project as well as some of the best scientists, a strong industrial base, sufficient materials, and the interest of its military officers. Nevertheless, the reaction of Heisenberg illustrates just how far the German program came from actually developing a nuclear weapon.

    A “Race” for the Bomb
    The United States government became aware of the German nuclear program in August 1939, when Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt, warning “that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated.” The United States was in a race to develop an atomic bomb believing whoever had the bomb first would win the war.

    Robert Furman, assistant to General Leslie Groves and the Chief of Foreign Intelligence for the Manhattan Project, described how “the Manhattan Project was built on fear: fear that the enemy had the bomb, or would have it before we could develop it. The scientists knew this to be the case because they were refugees from Germany, a large number of them, and they had studied under the Germans before the war broke out.” Manhattan Project physicist Leona Marshall Libby also recalled, “I think everyone was terrified that we were wrong, and the Germans were ahead of us.… Germany led the civilized world of physics in every aspect, at the time war set in, when Hitler lowered the boom. It was a very frightening time.”

    Farm Hall

    The United States government remained equally afraid. General Groves remembered, “Unless and until we had positive knowledge to the contrary, we had to assume that the most competent German scientists and engineers were working on an atomic program with the full support of their government and with the full capacity of German industry at their disposal. Any other assumption would have been unsound and dangerous” (Norris 295). There was even consideration of kidnapping Werner Heisenberg in Switzerland in 1942, although this plan never came to fruition. In 1943, the United States launched the Alsos Mission, a foreign intelligence project focused on learning the extent of Germany’s nuclear program.

    By 1944, however, the evidence was clear: the Germans had not come close to developing a bomb and had only advanced to preliminary research. Following the German defeat, the Allies detained ten German scientists, at Farm Hall, a bugged house in Godmanchester, England, from July 3, 1945 to January 3, 1946. Some of them, such as Heisenberg, Kurt Diebner, and Carl von Weiszacker were directly involved in the project, while others, such as Otto Hahn and Max von Laue, were only suspected and later proven to have not been involved. Heisenberg’s disbelief after hearing that the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima confirmed in the minds of the Allies that the German effort was never close. As one German scientist exclaimed, it must have taken “factories large as the United States to make that much uranium-235!”

    Systemic Disorganization

  • Le prix Nobel, science inexacte

    http://www.lemonde.fr/prix-nobel/article/2017/10/01/le-nobel-science-inexacte_5194474_1772031.html

    Alors que l’académie suédoise entame, lundi, la campagne 2017 de remise de ses prix, « Le Monde » revient sur quelques épisodes passés où les lauréats n’auraient pas dû être récompensés.

    Fallait-il attribuer le Nobel de littérature à Bob Dylan ? Faudrait-il retirer celui de la paix à Aung San Suu Kyi ? Le plus célèbre des prix suscite régulièrement des controverses.

    Pourtant, ces polémiques épargnent le champ scientifique. En médecine, en physique, en chimie ou encore en économie, les lauréats retenus depuis 1901 font presque toujours l’unanimité. Tout juste regrette t-on l’absence de découvertes majeures – la théorie de la relativité n’a jamais été primée – ou de grands noms de ces disciplines.

    Le panthéon scientifique érigé par l’académie suédoise cache pourtant quelques erreurs notables, sur lesquelles ses responsables actuels, sollicités par Le Monde, ont refusé de revenir. Elles apparaissent toutefois révélatrices tout autant de la puissance des mandarins que des cahots inévitables de la recherche ou simplement de l’écart qui peut exister entre théorie et expérience.

    La double faute de 1927

    Patrick Berche, microbiologiste et directeur de l’Institut Pasteur de Lille, n’hésite pas à parler d’« année terrible » pour évoquer 1927.

    Cet automne-là, les membres de l’Académie Nobel n’annoncent pas un, mais deux prix en médecine : celui de 1926, resté sans lauréat, est attribué au Danois Johannes Fibiger pour la découverte de Spiroptera carcinoma, un ver nématode capable de provoquer le cancer. Pour 1927, ils récompensent l’Autrichien Julius Wagner-Jauregg, pionnier de la malariathérapie, un traitement de la syphilis par injection du paludisme. On le sait aujourd’hui : l’un relevait de l’erreur intégrale, le second d’un raccourci hasardeux.

    Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger, Prix Nobel en 1926.
    La « découverte » de Fibiger tient presque du mirage. En 1907, cet éminent professeur décèle des lésions dans l’estomac de trois rats gris. Convaincu depuis des années des causes parasitaires du cancer, il multiplie les autopsies de rongeurs. D’abord sans résultat. Mais il finit par trouver, dans le ventre de rats ramassés dans une sucrerie, des vers nématodes. Quant aux lésions, certaines ont dégénéré en tumeurs cancéreuses, affirme-t-il. Publiés en 1913, ses résultats font sensation : pour la première fois, on a fabriqué expérimentalement un cancer ! En 1918, les Américains Frederick Bullock et George Rohdenburg mettent en doute la malignité des lésions. Mais, à l’époque, la connaissance du cancer reste lacunaire.

    De 1922 à 1927, Fibiger est « nominé » à seize reprises par des scientifiques de renom chargés de proposer des lauréats potentiels au Nobel. Les quatre premières années, sa candidature est écartée par des rapporteurs sceptiques. En 1926, les jurés renoncent au dernier moment, au point qu’aucun plan B n’est prévu. Mais, en 1927, le Suédois Folke Henschen, ami et thuriféraire de Fibiger, convainc ses pairs de primer le Danois.

    Il faut attendre 1935 pour voir pâlir son étoile. Cette année-là, l’Anglais Richard Passey reproduit son expérience et découvre que la cause des tumeurs ne tient nullement en la présence des nématodes, mais provient d’une carence en vitamine A. Pis : les lésions sont de simples métaplasies, aucunement cancéreuses. En 1952, une équipe américaine retrouvera les clichés microscopiques de Fibiger et confirmera le diagnostic. De tous les acteurs de cette histoire, le seul à avoir succombé à un cancer fut… Johannes Fibiger lui-même, en janvier 1928, un mois après la réception de son prix.

    Julius Wagner-Jauregg.
    Le naufrage de 1927 ne s’arrête pas là. Stockholm s’entiche d’« une triste figure de l’histoire de la médecine », selon Patrick Berche : l’Autrichien Julius Wagner-Jauregg. Toute sa vie, ce neurologue et psychiatre a défendu l’eugénisme et l’euthanasie des « crétins ». Pendant la première guerre mondiale, il a préconisé le traitement des « névrosés de guerre » par électrochocs – ce qui lui a valu un procès, dont il est sorti blanchi. A titre personnel, enfin, il a soutenu le parti nazi, échouant à y adhérer car sa première femme était juive.

    Mais, en 1927, l’Académie Nobel le récompense pour tout autre chose : la malariathérapie. Dans sa clinique de Graz, en Autriche, Wagner-Jauregg a en effet remarqué que les patients souffrant d’une paralysie générale causée par l’évolution de leur syphilis voient leurs symptômes réduits lors des épisodes fébriles. Et, pour provoquer une forte fièvre, quoi de mieux qu’une crise de paludisme ? Le parasite a l’avantage d’être contrôlable par la quinine.

    Bien que le chercheur déplore quelques victimes dans son laboratoire, sa méthode est finalement reconnue. Elle finit même par s’imposer pour traiter des schizophrènes. Elle ouvrira la voie à d’autres thérapies dites « de choc », censées sortir, par des comas ou des crises d’épilepsie provoqués, les malades mentaux de leurs états extrêmes. « Ce Nobel a été attribué sans réels fondements scientifiques, ni études systématiques, regrette Patrick Berche. Heureusement, la découverte des antibiotiques a mis un terme à cette pratique. »

    La bourde de Fermi

    Enrico Fermi.
    Le 10 novembre 1938, l’Académie Nobel annonce avoir décerné son prix au physicien italien Enrico Fermi « pour sa découverte de nouveaux éléments radioactifs, développés par l’irradiation de neutrons ». Le communiqué précise : « Enrico Fermi a réussi à produire deux nouveaux éléments, dont les numéros d’ordre sont 93 et 94, auxquels il a donné le nom d’ausénium et d’hespérium. » Brillante découverte.

    Jusque-là, l’uranium et ses 92 protons font figure de plafond, sinon théorique, du moins expérimental… Seulement voilà : il n’y a ni ausénium ni hespérium dans l’expérience du savant transalpin ! Fermi s’est trompé dans son interprétation, et le monde de la physique s’est rallié à son panache.

    L’homme, il est vrai, dispose d’une aura immense. Il a déjà mis en évidence une nouvelle forme de radioactivité – ce qui, en soi, aurait pu lui valoir un Nobel. Fort de ce résultat, il décide de bombarder de neutrons des noyaux d’uranium. Si tout se passe comme le veut sa théorie, il créera ainsi un nouvel élément, à 93 protons. Voire un autre, à 94.

    Ces deux merveilles, Fermi croit les identifier, dans l’article qu’il publie en 1934, dans la revue Nature. Pas directement, par la chimie, mais grâce à des propriétés physiques indirectes. Quelques voix timides ont beau émettre des doutes, la prudence légendaire de M. Fermi et sa renommée mondiale emportent l’adhésion. Le 12 décembre 1938, il reçoit son prix. Et en profite pour quitter l’Europe – sa femme est juive.

    Un mois plus tard, deux chimistes allemands, Otto Hahn et Fritz Strassmann, annoncent avoir reproduit son expérience. Les produits n’en sont pas des éléments superlourds, mais au contraire plus légers. L’explication est fournie en février, toujours dans la revue Nature, par les Autrichiens Lise Meitner et Otto Frisch : les noyaux d’uranium n’ont pas été enrichis… mais coupés en deux. Ce que Fermi a réalisé, sans le savoir, c’est la première réaction de fission nucléaire.

    Hahn, Strassmann et Frisch décrocheront la récompense suprême en 1944 (La seule femme a été oubliée !). Deux autres chimistes américains seront à leur tour primés en 1951 pour la découverte des vrais éléments 93 et 94, le neptunium et le plutonium. Pour le chimiste allemand Martin Quack, auteur d’un article sur cette aventure, la science ne peut se réduire à la « nouveauté » : « La répétition, la reproduction, l’extension ou le rejet des résultats précédents sont au cœur du bon travail scientifique. »

    Le Nobel de la honte

    Egas Moniz
    C’est assurément le prix le plus controversé de l’histoire du Nobel. Comment le gotha de la médecine a-t-il pu, en 1949, honorer le Portugais Egas Moniz pour ses travaux sur « la leucotomie préfrontale appliquée au traitement de certaines psychoses et troubles mentaux » – rebaptisée plus tard lobotomie ? Comment cette sinistre ablation d’une partie du cerveau a-t-elle pu passer tous les filtres de l’Académie ?

    Pour le neurochirurgien Marc Lévêque, la réponse est « une conjonction de circonstances : la personnalité de Moniz, un intense travail de lobbying, le manque de recul sur ces pratiques et l’absence de thérapeutique alternative pour certaines pathologies graves – le premier neuroleptique sera découvert trois ans plus tard, sans jamais, du reste, être récompensé par un Nobel ». Peut-être faudrait-il ajouter un peu de mauvaise conscience… En 1928 et 1936, Moniz a raté le prix de peu pour une autre découverte, majeure celle-là : l’artériographie cérébrale.

    En 1935, ce médecin au destin peu commun – il a aussi été ambassadeur du Portugal à Madrid, puis ministre des affaires étrangères – s’inspire d’observations réalisées sur les singes pour proposer un traitement novateur de certaines pathologies mentales : déconnecter partiellement les lobes préfrontaux du reste du cerveau.

    Le 11 novembre 1935, une première patiente – une ancienne prostituée de 63 ans souffrant de mélancolie et de paranoïa – est opérée. Dix-neuf autres suivront. Sur les vingt personnes traitées, le médecin annonce sept « guérisons », sept « améliorations », six patients « inchangés ». L’échantillon est bien faible, mais il va suffire à lancer une pratique.

    Dans la plupart des pays occidentaux, la lobotomie s’impose : des milliers de malades sont opérés, malgré les protestations de nombreux psychiatres. Aux Etats-Unis, Walter Freeman la « perfectionne » : en lieu et place des ouvertures réalisées des deux côtés du crâne, il passe par le globe oculaire.

    Star mondiale, salué par la presse américaine pour ses prouesses, Freeman milite, après la Libération, pour que son aîné portugais obtienne le Nobel. Il rêve évidemment de partager les lauriers. Espoir déçu. En 1949, l’autre moitié de la récompense échoit au Suisse Walter Hess, qui a mis en évidence le rôle du cerveau dans la gestion des organes.

    En 1952, la découverte du premier neuroleptique change la donne : la chirurgie cède la place à la chimie. Du moins pour la grande masse des patients. Des héritiers du Dr. Moniz sévissent encore çà et là. Dans certains pays, comme la Chine, la chirurgie du cerveau reste d’usage courant. En France, la dernière lobotomie « officielle » date de 1991.

    Lire aussi : Pratiquée jusque dans les années 80, la lobotomie visait surtout les femmes

    La faillite des stars de la finance

    Robert C. Merton en 2006 et Myron Scholes en 2008
    Avouons-le : installer Robert Merton et Myron Scholes dans ce triste palmarès peut paraître cruel. « Mais leur mésaventure a provoqué chez les économistes un éclat de rire général et demeure un cas d’école », s’amuse Jean-Marc Daniel, professeur d’économie à l’ESCP Europe.

    Le 15 octobre 1997, les deux économistes américains sont en effet primés pour avoir « ouvert de nouveaux horizons au champ des évaluations économiques ». Leur spécialité : appliquer les probabilités aux marchés financiers afin de prévoir le comportement des produits dérivés. Sur toutes les places boursières, le modèle dit de « Black et Scholes » (décédé en 1995, Fischer Black n’aura pas le prix) fait déjà fureur.

    Les deux lauréats conseillent d’ailleurs le prestigieux fonds d’investissement LTCM, coqueluche de Wall Street. En 1997, la crise asiatique fragilise ses positions. Mais le modèle mathématique prévoit un retour à l’équilibre. LTCM mise en ce sens, notamment en Russie. Et patatras ! En 1998, Moscou dévisse et LTCM prend l’eau.

    « Aucun autre fonds n’a fait aussi mal », raconte Jean-Marc Daniel. Les pertes avoisinent les 4 milliards de dollars. La Réserve fédérale (Fed, banque centrale) convainc les banques américaines d’intervenir pour éviter la faillite du fonds spéculatif.

    L’ensemble de la planète financière échappe à la contagion. Mais les marchés s’en trouveront affectés pendant plusieurs mois. Si les deux chercheurs restent, selon Daniel Cohen, professeur à l’Ecole normale supérieure, « de grands économistes, qui ont créé un champ dans la discipline », leur étoile brille un peu moins fort au firmament des Nobel.

    • _ Cet article du journal Le Monde est effectivement douteux. *

      Par exemple, Robert C. Merton en 2006 et Myron Schole n’ont pas reçu de prix Nobel, mais le Prix de la Banque de Suède en sciences économiques.
      Un hochet pour les économiste néo libéraux, pas un prix Nobel.

      On remarquera, que parmi les lauréats qui n’auraient pas dû être récompensés, l’absence d’Henry Kissinger, le « Prix Nobel de l’humour noir. » (Françoise Giroud).

      Ce quotidien Le Monde, douteux. qui ne vérifie même pas ce qu’il imprime, sur wikipédia.

    • (adressé au Monde, 9/10)

      Je prends connaissance d’un article paru dans votre journal sous le titre « Le prix Nobel, science inexacte » et dans lequel est indiqué à propos d’Enrico Fermi : Le 12 décembre 1938, il reçoit son prix. Et en profite pour quitter l’Europe – sa femme est juive .

      Dieu merci le monde n’est pas fait que de sans-dignité, de journalistes-au-Monde et de gens qui... profitent.
      Ce couple ne tombait pas sous le coup des lois dites raciales de 1938.
      Ce fut simplement parce qu’il ne voulut pas profiter-sic de cette exemption, et ne voulait pas que ses enfants grandissent dans un pareil climat, qu’il décida de ne pas rentrer en Italie.

  • Top 6 des femmes scientifiques qui se sont fait faucher leur découverte (et leur prix Nobel)
    http://egalitariste.tumblr.com/post/114672992809/femmes-prix-nobel-sexisme

    A part Marie Curie, il faut bien reconnaître que nous connaissons fort peu de femmes scientifiques. Et figurez-vous que ça n’est pas parce que nous sommes de mauvaise volonté, mais parce que le corps scientifique a mis toute son énergie dans le fait de ne pas mettre en avant les femmes qui faisaient des découvertes de dingo, notamment en refourguant les prix Nobel qu’elles méritaient à des hommes.

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    ❞ Lise Meitner (1878-1968)
    Une des plus grandes scientifiques de son époque à qui l’on doit notamment la découverte de la fission nucléaire en 1938. Sauf que Lise était autrichienne, et qu’en plus d’être une femme, elle était juive. Du coup, son nom a été effacé de toutes les publications sur la fission nucléaire au profit de son collègue et ami de longue date, Otto Hahn. Bien que nommée trois fois, elle ne recevra jamais le prix Nobel, contrairement à ce brave Otto qui décrochera celui de Chimie en 1944.❞

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    ❞ Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
    Alors elle, elle ne s’est pas fait voler un mais bien deux prix Nobel ! D’abord ses travaux sur la structure de l’ADN (la fameuse forme de double hélice) sont piqués par Crick et Watson, qui recevront le prix Nobel de Médecine, ensuite ses travaux sur la structure des virus seront poursuivis par Aaron Klug qui recevra le Nobel de Chimie à sa place. Pour couronner le tout, elle mourra à seulement 37 ans d’un cancer de l’ovaire probablement dû à sa surexposition aux rayons radiations.❞

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    ❞ Jocelyn Bell Burnell (née en 1943)
    C’est alors qu’elle était encore étudiante à Cambridge en 1967 que Jocelyn Bell Burnell découvrit le premier pulsar. Mais, utilisant comme excuse le fait qu’elle n’était qu’une élève, le comité Nobel a décidé de récompenser son directeur de thèse, Antony Hewish, à sa place. Une injustice qui avait à l’époque, en 1974, fait un vrai scandale auprès de la communauté scientifique pour qui il ne faisait aucun doute que Jocelyn Bell Burnell n’avait pas été récompensé en raison de son genre.❞
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    ❞ Cecilia Payne (1900-1979)
    Née à Wendover en Angleterre, Cecilia devra s’exiler aux Etats-Unis pour avoir le droit de faire de la recherche. A Harvard, elle découvrira que les étoiles sont composées à 98% d’hydrogène et d’hélium, mais le professeur Henry Russell la dissuadera de publier le résultats de ses recherches, affirmant que le monde n’est pas prêt à accepter que la Terre et les étoiles n’ont pas la même composition. Et puis il publiera lui-même un article sur le sujet s’attribuant tout le mérite à la place de Cecilia. Une belle enflure.❞
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    ❞ Nettie Stevens (1861-1912)
    Prix Nobel de physiologie ou médecine en 1933 pour ses découvertes sur le chromosome et l’hérédité, Thomas Hunt Morgan est considéré comme l’un des plus grands généticiens du XXe siècle. Très bien. Sauf que le Thomas a légérement oublié de préciser que c’était son employée au Bryn Mawr College, Nettie Stevens, qui avait découvert en 1905 que le sexe de l’enfant était déterminé par les chromosomes. C’est très moyen effectivement.❞
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    ❞ Esther Lederberg (1922-2006)
    C’est alors qu’elle travaillait encore avec son premier mari, Joshua Lederberg, qu’Esther Lederberg a fait des découvertes décisives sur l’accouplement des bactéries. Découvertes qui ont valu à son mari, Joshua, de décrocher seul le prix Nobel de Médecine en 1958, pendant qu’Esther la jouait discrète en coulisses.

    Question parité, y’a encore du taff chez les Nobel.
    Découvrez d’autres femmes de science via le projet de jeu de cartes “Femmes de Science”. Le jeu final sera offert sous licence Creative Commons.https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/femmes-de-science
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    Chien-Shiung Wu

    Born in Liu Ho, China, in 1912, Chien-Shiung Wu overturned a law of physics and participated in the development of the atom bomb.

    Wu was recruited to Columbia University in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project and conducted research on radiation detection and uranium enrichment. She stayed in the United States after the war and became known as one of the best experimental physicists of her time, said Nina Byers, a retired physics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

    In the mid-1950s, two theoretical physicists, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, approached Wu to help disprove the law of parity. The law holds that in quantum mechanics, two physical systems—like atoms—that were mirror images would behave in identical ways.

    Wu’s experiments using cobalt-60, a radioactive form of the cobalt metal, upended this law, which had been accepted for 30 years.

    This milestone in physics led to a 1957 Nobel Prize for Yang and Lee—but not for Wu, who was left out despite her critical role. “People found [the Nobel decision] outrageous,” said Byers.

    Pnina Abir-Am, a historian of science at Brandeis University, agreed, adding that ethnicity also played a role.

    Wu died of a stroke in 1997 in New York.
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130519-women-scientists-overlooked-dna-history-science

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    il y a aussi Mileva Marić qui était la camarade d’études d’Albert Einstein, puis sa première épouse. Depuis les années 1990, il existe un débat concernant sa participation à la plupart des travaux scientifiques de son mari.
    http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Einstein

    #historicisation #femme #femmes #sciences

    • C’est le sujet de Rosa Montero dans son dernier livre, qui parle de Marie Curie
      http://editions-metailie.com/livre/lidee-ridicule-de-ne-plus-jamais-te-revoir

      Elle raconte que Marie Curie n’a reçu son prix Nobel de physique, en 1903, que parce que son mari a tapé un scandale en apprenant qu’il était le seul cité et parce qu’il a menacé de le refuser si elle n’y était pas associée (un type bien, ce Pierre Curie). Mais à la cérémonie il a été seul à faire un discours, et la somme attribuée est restée la même pour eux deux.

      Quand elle a reçu son prix Nobel de chimie, en 1911, alors qu’elle était veuve, on s’en est à peine aperçu en France parce qu’à ce moment elle était au centre d’un scandale pour avoir une liaison avec un homme marié (le physicien Paul Langevin) et il y avait carrément des attroupements devant chez elle pour lancer des pierres sur ses fenêtres. Le comité Nobel lui a écrit pour lui dire que s’ils avaient été au courant de cette affaire, ils ne lui auraient probablement pas décerné le prix (!!) et que si elle pouvait éviter de venir le chercher, ce serait mieux (!!!). Elle leur a fait une réponse parfaite ("Ce prix m’est attribué pour ma découverte du radium et du polonium. Je crois qu’il n’y a aucun lien entre mon travail scientifique et les faits de ma vie privée") et bien sûr, elle y est allée (et cette fois elle a fait le discours).

    • @monolecte
      au contraire il est grand temps d’œuvrer pour une réhabilitation des femmes, scientifiques ou peintres, musiciennes, des femmes en général, et de toutes conditions.
      C’est bien de s’arcbouter pour dénoncer qu’on en a marre d’être méprisées et effacées parce que femmes, c’est aussi une question politique plus large que j’estime depuis longtemps, d’être force de proposition et de maintenir ce cap.