''Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte'' (''Research Reports in Nuclear Physics'') was an internal publication of the German '' Uranverein'', which was initiated under the ''

Heereswaffenamt ''Waffenamt'' (WaA) was the German Army Weapons Agency. It was the centre for research and development of the Weimar Republic and later the Third Reich for weapons, ammunition and army equipment to the German Reichswehr and then Wehrmacht ...

'' (Army Ordnance Office) in 1939; in 1942, supervision of the ''Uranverein'' was turned over to the

Reichsforschungsrat The Reichsforschungsrat was created in Germany in 1936 under the Education Ministry for the purpose of centralized planning of all basic and applied research, with the exception of aeronautical research. It was reorganized in 1942 and placed under t ...

under the

Reichserziehungsministerium The Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture (german: , also unofficially known as the "Reich Education Ministry" (german: ), or "REM") existed from 1934 until 1945 under the leadership of Bernhard Rust and was responsible for unifying t ...

. Reports in this publication were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied

Operation Alsos The Alsos Mission was an organized effort by a team of British and United States military, scientific, and intelligence personnel to discover enemy scientific developments during World War II. Its chief focus was on the German nuclear energy pr ...

and sent to the

United States Atomic Energy Commission The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President ...

for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. Many of the reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the

Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 ...

Library of the

American Institute of Physics The American Institute of Physics (AIP) promotes science and the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. The AIP is made up of various member societies. Its corpora ...

. Many of them are reprinted and transcribed in the book "''Collected Works / Gesammelte Werke''" listed below which is available in most libraries. There are reports numbered G-1 to G-395. Prominent German scientists who published reports in ''Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte'' as members of the ''Uranverein''Walker, 1993, 268-274 and Reference #40 on p. 262. can be grouped as follows: *Nine of the ten German nuclear physicists, except for Max von Laue, incarcerated in England at the close of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

under Operation Epsilon: Erich Bagge, Kurt Diebner,

Walther Gerlach Walther Gerlach (1 August 1889 – 10 August 1979) was a German physicist who co-discovered, through laboratory experiment, spin quantization in a magnetic field, the Stern–Gerlach effect. The experiment was conceived by Otto Stern in 1921 an ...

Otto Hahn Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner ...

Paul Harteck Paul Karl Maria Harteck (20 July 190222 January 1985) was an Austrian physical chemist. In 1945 under Operation Epsilon in "the big sweep" throughout Germany, Harteck was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces for suspicion of ...

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent serie ...

, Horst Korsching,

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (; 28 June 1912 – 28 April 2007) was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under ...

, and Karl Wirtz. *German physicists sent to

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

to work on the

Soviet atomic bomb project The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II. Although the Soviet scientific community disc ...

: Robert Döpel, Walter Herrmann, Heinz Pose,

Nikolaus Riehl Nikolaus Riehl (24 May 1901 – 2 August 1990) was a German nuclear physicist. He was head of the scientific headquarters of Auergesellschaft. When the Russians entered Berlin near the end of World War II, he was invited to the Soviet Union, whe ...

, and Karl Zimmer. *Others: Fritz Bopp,

Walther Bothe Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe (; 8 January 1891 – 8 February 1957) was a German nuclear physicist, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 with Max Born. In 1913, he joined the newly created Laboratory for Radioactivity at the Reich Physi ...

, Wolfgang Finkelnburg,

Siegfried Flügge Siegfried Flügge (16 March 1912, in Dresden – 15 December 1997, in Hinterzarten) was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions to nuclear physics and the theoretical basis for nuclear weapons. He worked on the German nuclear en ...

Hans Geiger Johannes Wilhelm "Hans" Geiger (; ; 30 September 1882 – 24 September 1945) was a German physicist. He is best known as the co-inventor of the detector component of the Geiger counter and for the Geiger–Marsden experiment which discover ...

, Karl-Heinz Höcker, Fritz Houtermans,

Georg Joos Georg Jakob Christof Joos (25 May 1894 in Bad Urach, German Empire – 20 May 1959 in Munich, West Germany) was a German experimental physicist. He wrote ''Lehrbuch der theoretischen Physik'', first published in 1932 and one of the most influ ...

, Horst Korsching, Carl Ramsauer, Fritz Sauter, and

Fritz Strassmann Friedrich Wilhelm Strassmann (; 22 February 1902 – 22 April 1980) was a German chemist who, with Otto Hahn in December 1938, identified the element barium as a product of the bombardment of uranium with neutrons. Their observation was the ke ...

Notes

Bibliography

*Hentschel, Klaus, editor and Ann M. Hentschel, editorial assistant and Translator ''Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources'' (Birkhäuser, 1996) *Walker, Mark ''German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949'' (Cambridge, 1993) *Werner Heisenberg, W. Blum, H. P. Durr, H. Rechenberg "Collected Works / Gesammelte Werke" (Springer, 1985) {{ISBN, 0-387-13400-X 1939 establishments in Germany 1945 disestablishments in Germany Defunct magazines published in Germany Magazines established in 1939 Magazines disestablished in 1945 Nuclear program of Nazi Germany Science and technology magazines German-language magazines Physics magazines

See also

Notes

Bibliography