- Person
- James Franck
- Lived
- 1882–1964
- Field
- Atomic physics
- From
- German-American
The story
In February 1942 Arthur Compton set up the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project, to build reactors that would make plutonium for atomic bombs. Compton asked James Franck, a German-born Nobel laureate who had left Germany in protest against the Nazis, to head its chemistry division. Franck welcomed the chance, telling Compton that he was fighting not the German people but the Nazis who had them in a stranglehold.
As success neared in 1945, Franck also chaired the laboratory’s Committee on Political and Social Problems. Its members included Leo Szilard, Eugene Rabinowitch and Glenn Seaborg, along with Donald Hughes, J. J. Nickson and J. C. Stearns. That year Franck warned the former vice president Henry Wallace of the scientists’ fear that humanity had learned to release atomic power without being ethically and politically prepared to use it wisely.
The committee met in secret, and its report, largely drafted by Rabinowitch, was completed on 11 June 1945 and has been known ever since as the Franck Report. It argued that the bomb should not be used on Japanese cities without warning. It proposed instead an open demonstration of the weapon’s power before representatives of the United Nations in an uninhabited place, such as a desert or barren island. It warned that the American secret could not be kept for long, that a surprise attack would undermine trust and set off a nuclear arms race, and it urged international control of atomic energy.
Franck carried the report to Washington on 12 June. The government’s Interim Committee reconsidered its position on 21 June but decided there was no alternative, and in August the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The report was declassified in 1946, with some passages censored.
Its prediction of an arms race proved accurate in the Cold War that followed. The Nobel Foundation’s biography of Franck says the report still stands as a monument to scientists’ rejection of the use of science for destruction.
Why it matters
The Franck Report was one of the first statements of scientists' moral responsibility for the weapons they create, and its warnings about an arms race proved prophetic.
About James Franck
Nobel physicist whose electron-collision experiment proved atoms have quantised energy levels; he resigned in protest in 1933 and later led the Franck Report against a surprise atomic attack.
More about James Franck
- James Franck championed women in physicsJames Franck actively advanced the careers of women physicists, notably Hertha Sponer and Hilde Levi, at a time when few women held research posts.
- The Franck–Condon principle explains how molecules glowIn 1925 James Franck proposed the mechanism, later developed by Edward Condon into the Franck–Condon principle, that governs how molecules absorb and emit light.
- James Franck made Göttingen a world centre of physicsFrom 1920 to 1933 James Franck and Max Born made Göttingen a world centre of quantum physics, training scientists such as Blackett, Condon and Oppenheimer.
- James Franck proved atoms take energy in fixed stepsIn 1914 James Franck and Gustav Hertz showed electrons lose exactly 4.9 electronvolts to mercury atoms, proving atomic energy is quantised; they won the 1925 Nobel Prize.
- James Franck devoted his later years to photosynthesisFrom the 1930s James Franck studied how plants turn light into chemical energy, heading Chicago's Photosynthesis Research Group until 1956.
- James Franck resigned in protest against Nazi lawsOn 17 April 1933 James Franck, exempt as a war veteran, resigned his Göttingen chair in protest, the first German academic to do so over the Nazi civil service law.
- Franck helped dismissed Jewish scientists find workBefore leaving Germany in November 1933, James Franck helped Frederick Lindemann of Oxford find posts abroad for Jewish scientists dismissed by the Nazis.
Sources
- James Franck Atomic Heritage Foundation
- James Franck – Biographical NobelPrize.org
- James Franck Wikipedia
- Franck Report Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.