Women of Science
Lise Meitner Remembered -- the 40th Anniversary of her Death
"She is our Marie Curie"
High praise from a high authority. And Einstein knew whereof he spoke. He knew both women personally and he knew their work.
Today, October 27, 2008, marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Lise Meitner. She became in her lifetime, and still ranks as, one of Germany's greatest physicists...better said, one of the world's great physicists. She played a key role, perhaps the pivotal role, in the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 and 1939, and in so doing became known for a time as the Mother of the Nuclear Age and, sometimes, the Mother of the Atomic Bomb. She was asked to come to the U.S. and work on the Manhattan Project, but she refused because she considered it a perversion of her science. She died in 1968 in Cambridge, England, just a few days short of her 90th birthday.
Meitner was born in Vienna on either November 7 or November 17, 1878 -- no one seems sure. She was ethnically Jewish but was baptized a protestant in 1908 and remained one throughout the rest of her life. In 1906 she became only the second woman to receive a doctorate in physics from the University 0f Vienna. There was little future for a woman physicist in Austria, so in 1907 she departed for Berlin, then the vital center of German physics. She began by attending lectures by, and then serving as assistant to, the great Max Planck, but was soon introduced to a young chemist by the name of Otto Hahn. They hit if off and began a collaboration in radioactivity, she doing the physics and he doing the chemistry, that endured off and on until July 1938 when she was forced to flee from Nazi Germany. Even then it continued in correspondence and one secret meeting in Copenhagen until January 1939.
What is remarkable to an observer in the current age, looking back upon the dark ages of gender equality, is how irresistibly Meitner seems to have bubbled to the surface of the physics community in Berlin and indeed in all Europe notwithstanding the pervasive prejudice of most of the men in that community against women in science. She endured professional and personal obstacles to her career of the most absurd and inexcusable variety: for example, when she began working with Hahn she was required by Emil Fischer, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, to work only in a basement room with a separate entrance, no toilet facilities and no access to the laboratories upstairs. Worse yet, for many years she had to work without pay and without academic status because the Prussian university and research institute system had no places for women. This photo of Lise at the Summer Physics Colloquium at Niels Bohr's Physics Institute in Copenhagen in 1935 illustrates what she was up against (Max Born and Werner Heisenberg are with her in the front row):
Although her official academic status was lowly, Meitner's brilliance was evidently widely recognized and she inexorably became one of the elite physicists in Europe. Just consider the list of some of the physicists with whom she had professional and sometimes personal relationships: Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Max von Laue, Wolfgang Pauli, James Franck, Neils Bohr, Max Born, Erwin Schroedinger, Werner Heisenberg, James Chadwick, Enrico Fermi, Irene Curie.
The embedded backwardness of turn-of-the-century Prussian civilization gradually gave way through the 20's to more egalitarian values and in 1926 Lise became the first woman physics professor in Germany. She was by then so advanced in her standing in the scientific community that the requirement of an Habilitation thesis was waived -- she had already written and published more than 40 papers.
A Daring Harrowing Flight from Nazi Germany
Although Meitner lived and worked exclusively in Berlin from from 1907 until 1938 she remained an Austrian citizen until March 1938 when Hitler annexed Austria and all Austrians became Germans whether they liked it or not. By early 1938 it was clear that Lise's position as an ethnic Jew, notwithstanding that she was in practice a Lutheran, was becoming fatal to her career and her personal safety. Alarm for her safety spread among her colleagues across Europe until finally two Dutchmen, Dirk Coster and Adriaan Fokker, both of them physicists, devised a daring and dangerous plan for her escape from Germany. Meitner had, of course, no valid passport for travel and had no permission to leave Germany. Her Austrian passport was useless after the Anschluss and she had not been issued a German passport. It was therefore entirely illegal for her to depart Germany with no intention of returning.
On the morning of Wednesday July 13, 1938, Meitner was driven to the train station in Berlin by Paul Rosebaud, editor of Der Naturwissenschaften. She was in a state of terror and almost backed out at the last moment. The plan was for her to board a lightly traveled train bound for Groningen in Holland which would cross the Dutch-German border at the small resort town of Nieuweschwans. It was the northernmost border rail crossing between Germany and Holland. When she boarded the train she had the clothes on her back, a small suitcase, 10 marks in her purse, and a diamond ring in her pocket (given to her at the last moment by Hahn to be used in case of an emergency).
By pre-arrangement, Dirk Coster was waiting on board the train for her and and pretended to greet her with surprise, as though he had not expected to see her. This was part of the escape plan. Coster was himself at that moment present in Nazi Germany helping a prominent Jewish scientist illegally leave the country, and in so doing he acted with great heroism and at peril to himself. The train pulled out and the tense and terrifying journey proceeded. With the help of local contacts on the Dutch side of the border the resourceful Dirk Coster had arranged with the Dutch border patrol that Meitner would not be asked for her passport or otherwise prevented from entering Holland. This was a very considerable piece of work on Coster's part. The plan worked and Coster and Meitner crossed over into Holland without incident and traveled on to Groningen. It was an incredible adventure for the mild-mannered and intense 59 year-old physicist, one she would rather have done without.
In due course Meitner left Holland, moved on to Stockholm and took up a position in a new nuclear physics institute sponsored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and run by a very male-chauvinistic Nobel Laureate by the name of Manne Siegbahn. The relationship with Siegbahn proved to be an unhappy one, he was ever unfriendly and unhelpful to her, and she never really felt at home in Sweden. She nevertheless spent the next 22 years of her life there, eventually becoming a Swedish citizen. In 1960 at the age of 81 she moved to Cambridge, England, to be near her nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, and his family. She died there on October 27, 1968.
The Sad Case of the Deutsches Museum
The Deutsches Museum in Munich is thought by many to be the leading science museum in Germany, and maybe it is. It has, however, like many German institutions, had some difficulty coming to terms with its own history. The museum's treatment of Lise Meitner is illustrative.
What you see in the photo above is an exhibit to be found today in the Chemistry section of the Deutsches Museum. It is captioned:
The Experimental Apparatus with which the Team of Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann Discovered Nuclear Fission in 1938
It was not always so. From 1953 to 1990 the exhibit, which is a composite of devices used by Meitner and Hahn in three separate rooms of the institute and not a single work table, was designated in the museum as:
Work Table of Otto Hahn
The signs on the wall next to the exhibit originally made no mention of Lise Meitner. Charlotte Kerner has explained in her current article about Meitner in Die Zeit that Hahn himself organized the original museum exhibit. This may explain why the original treatment of the exhibit referred only to Hahn and not to Meitner. In 1989, in response to pressure from knowledgeable historians of science, among them Ruth Lewin Sime, the distinguished American biographer of Lise Meitner, the exhibit was re-titled and the accompanying description was revised and updated (with text by Sime). Welcome corrections to be sure, but 37 years overdue from an institution that should have, and must in fact have, known better. Such institutional lassitude over such an extended period is a stain on the scholarly reputation of the museum.
One would think that the museum having been thus brought to account in 1989 would have taken steps to assure that all of its public faces would be corrected. If so, one would be wrong. The museum continues today to present on its website an account of the so-called work table at odds with the true history of the devices on the table and with the updated description within the museum itself. In particular, the website contains three egregious misstatements: for one, the website asserts that the devices shown in the exhibit were assembled and organized by Otto Hahn when in fact they were put together by Meitner herself. A knowledgeable observer can plainly see these devices are those of the physicist not the chemist.
For another, Lise Meitner is characterized on the website as a "Mitarbeiterin" of Hahn. This term in German connotes "assistant" or "junior partner" not "colleague" or "full partner." When the devices displayed on the exhibit table were employed in 1938 in the experiments leading to the splitting of the uranium nucleus Meitner was a world-renowned physicist with her own research institute and staff separate from that of Hahn and was no one's "Mitarbeiterin."
The website continues to err by claiming that Hahn did not participate in the German effort during WW II to develop an atomic bomb ("Hahn am deutschen Atomprojekt nicht beteiligt war..."). As Professor Sime has pointed out, "the opposite is true."
Curiously, although the museum director and his staff are well aware of these errors and know that the website is out of step with the museum exhibit itself, they persist in maintaining the website in its present form.
As it happens, the Deutsches Museum is even now in the process of producing a scholarly history of itself during the Nazi era. This would be an excellent occasion for the museum to make amends for its past mistreatment of Lise Meitner and bring its website properly up to date.
[Subsequent to this writing, and after an exchange of correspondence between the Deutsches Museum management and the author, the museum management begrudgingly updated the website so as to correspond more closely to the facts and to the description given in the museum itself.]
The 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry -- Five Swedes Get it Wrong
The end result of the combined experimental and theoretical efforts of Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn from 1934 through early 1939 was to split the atom, discover and describe the process of nuclear fission and launch the nuclear age. It counts as one of mankind's great scientific achievements and would richly deserve the ultimate prize for achievements in physics and chemistry. The Nobel Prize would count as that ultimate prize if only it were what the public thinks it is, namely, a prize awarded by a qualified panel of certified experts adjudicating the merits of scientific work in an atmosphere free of scientific, political, racial and gender prejudice and pressure. This definition, unfortunately, does not apply to the Nobel Prize.
The Nobel Prizes for Physics and Chemistry (and perhaps for all other fields as well) are dispensed by a small panel of Swedish persons meeting behind closed doors who may or may not be qualified to judge what they are judging and who often bring to bear upon their judgments all imaginable forms of prejudice, incompetence, whimsy and small-mindedness. To take just one example -- Albert Einstein was nominated ten times, all in vain, for the Nobel Prize in Physics before finally receiving it on the eleventh go-around in 1921 -- sixteen years after his discovery of special relativity in 1905 and six years after his discovery of general relativity in 1915. Almost every man, woman and child on the planet knew by the mid-teens that Einstein was one of the scientific giants of human history. Though few understood it, the language of relativity had become part of everyday conversation in all corners of the globe. After the solar eclipse observations by Eddington in 1919, confirming that light bends going around the sun, Einstein was practically deified. Nevertheless, it took the five Swedes on the physics committee until 1921 to catch up. One of the reasons given by one of the five, by the way, was that relativity was about philosophy not science! Five Swedes off the street locked in a room with a bottle of acquavit could have done better.
With this in mind it will come as no surprise to the reader that Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn did not share a Nobel Prize. On the contrary, Otto Hahn alone was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in reward for his discovery of the fission heavy atomic nuclei." (From the Presentation Speech of Professor A. Westgren, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, given on December 10, 1944.) Hahn was not permitted to leave Germany in 1944 to receive the prize and so did not actually receive it until 1946.
Beginning in the early 1930's Enrico Fermi in Italy had been experimenting with the bombardment of nuclei of various elements on the periodic table with neutrons. In 1934 Lise Meitner wished to undertake a project at her institute in Berlin to replicate, clarify and extend Fermi's work. She needed the assistance of a chemist so invited Otto Hahn to join her in the project, and he agreed to do so. Over the space of the next four years the two of them, with the added participation of an analytical chemist named Fritz Strassmann, carried out a series of experiments in which they bombarded nuclei, uranium nuclei in particular, with neutrons, using the devices now exhibited by the Deutsches Museum. Meitner inspired the project and according to Strassmann was its intellectual leader.
The project and the experimental neutron bombardment work of Meitner, Hahn and Strassmann continued into the first half of 1938. As we have seen, Meitner was forced to flee for her safety in July of 1938. That left Hahn and Strassmann behind in Berlin to carry on the work, using, of course, the devices and instruments Meitner necessarily left behind when she fled. From her new post in Sweden, however, Meitner continued to direct the experimental work of Hahn and Strassmann through correspondence. In our present era of instant Internet communication it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn how fast and efficient was the postal service in Germany and Sweden in 1938. Letters posted in Berlin were often delivered in Stockholm within one or two days. Through written correspondence Lise could thus closely direct and follow the experiments in Berlin, and Otto could quickly report his results to her.
In addition to their correspondence, Meitner and Hahn had one secret meeting in Copenhagen in November 1938. He went there to deliver a lecture and she quietly came over from Stockholm. They met in private and did not disclose the meeting to their friends. He told her of some strange results he was getting as the result of neutron bombardment of uranium, using increasingly sophisticated and exact methods. The results were such that neither of them could believe in their accuracy, and Meitner instructed him to go back to Berlin and do it over again with even greater care. In hindsight we can recognize that the results in question, which troubled them so, showed that the neutron bombardments were splitting the uranium nuclei.
Hahn and Strassmann continued this line of experimentation for the remainder of November and on into December. Hahn bore down hard and his methods became increasingly clever and refined. He was a talented chemist and he knew they were on the verge of an exciting discovery (without knowing what it was), he was under constant pressure from Meitner and they both knew that others, notably Curie and Savitch in Paris, were working along similar lines. Meitner and Hahn naturally wanted to get there first. Scientific research, it turns out, is a highly competitive field in which the players are interested not only in the discovery of truth but also in winning the race and enjoying the glory and rewards which come to the victor. Ego vies with intellect for primacy in scientific work.
As the experimental work continued into December it resolved itself into a puzzle over the persistent presence of barium in the dish containing the substances resulting from the neutron bombardment of uranium. Hahn, Meitner and everyone else working in the field expected the neutron bombarment of uranium to result in neutrons being captured in the uranium nucleus, thus adding to its weight and resulting in a new and heavier element, a so-called transuranium element. In this schema barium had no place. Barium (element 56) is a lighter not a heavier element than uranium (element 92). Common sense tells you that you cannot add weight to uranium and get a lighter element as a result. You must necessarily get a heavier element. Where, then, was all this barium coming from?
Hahn and Strassmann knew that some of the barium was coming from the barium chloride they themselves had introduced into the mixture to serve as a carrier agent in aid of the experiment. This was an accepted chemistry technique. The two chemists did not think for a moment that any of their barium was resulting from the neutron bombardment process. To the contrary, they believed that the resulting substance must be some kind of isotope of radium. Therefore they concentrated on the attempt to separate out the "resulting substance" from the barium carrier. Hahn and Strassmann tried a series of ingenious and refined methods of accomplishing this separation, but every one of them failed and they were left time and again with a bowl full of barium. It is easy for the observer today to say, "So be it. Your bombardment of uranium has evidently produced barium. Now go to work and figure out why." But this was not Hahn's mind-set. He believed, as did most every other chemist and physicist on earth, that the laws of physics do not permit barium to result from neutron bombardment of uranium. It simply cannot happen. This was why Lise told him in Copenhagen in November to go home and try it again. He did, and the result was the same.
This left Hahn in a dilemma: the facts of the experiments told him one thing, but his mind told him another. Should he publish the results of his experiments, even though he was not sure of them and could not explain them, or should he wait until Meitner could get up to speed and provide an explanation?
The timing of events now becomes critical. On Monday, December 19,Hahn wrote to Meitner describing his results: "Our radium isotopes act like barium...Perhaps you can suggest some fantastic explanation. We understand that it really can't break up into barium.... So try to think of some other possibility." She received that letter in Stockholm on Wednesday, December 21, and replied immediately saying it was "difficult to accept....but not impossible." She also informed Hahn that she would be leaving on Friday, December 23, for the village of Kungalv in the Swedish countryside for a week's vacation. She did not in that letter attempt an explanation of the barium.
On the same day that Meitner received and replied to his letter (Wednesday, December 21), Hahn and Strassmann completed one final test -- they subjected the mystery substance to a process of beta decay, which produced the element lanthanum rather than actinium, which in turn meant that the substance in question was not a radium isotope but was barium. Otto decided at this point to publish, without waiting for further input from Lise. He thereupon contacted Paul Rosbaud at Der Naturwissenschaften and told him he had an important paper for the next edition. Rosbaud bumped another article to make space and offered to print Hahn's article in the January 6, 1939, edition of the journal.
This was a fateful decision by Hahn at a critical moment in the history of science. On the one hand, he was really not ready in his own mind to accept the results of the experiments, i.e., that he had produced barium. He had doubts. On the other hand, he knew his results were important, or might be, however strange, and he wanted to get into print before Curie and Savitch did so. He was evidently not willing to wait until Lise could come aboard and provide the needed explanation. His haste to publish and his taste for glory overcame his uncertainty about his results and his loyalty to Lise. We can mark this moment as the point at which Hahn decided to become a Bonze (German for "big man").
Otto wrote to Meitner again that evening (Wednesday), lamely asserting (knowing he was about to push off without her), "We cannot hush up the results even though they may be absurd in physical terms. You can see that you will be performing a good deed [if you can provide an explanation]." "A good deed?" What kind of condescending expression was that? He promised to send her a manuscript copy of the article he was about to write.
Hahn completed his write up the next day, Thursday, December 22, and delivered it personally to Rosbaud that evening. The article, as we know, bore the names of Hahn and Strassmann but not of Meitner. Later that evening Hahn mailed a copy to Meitner, addressed to her in Stockholm because he had not yet seen her letter advising him she was leaving for Kungalv.
In retrospect it is fair to criticize Hahn's rush to publish. The article was, after all, not truly ready for publication (see below). Did he have any reason to think Curie and Savitch were really so close behind? Was it not in fact the beginning of the Christmas holiday season when most everyone can be expected to slack off in any event? Did he not have a moral obligation to Lise, who had been driven out of her home and her laboratory by the Nazis, and who had in fact inspired and directed the project which had led to the barium results, to wait at least a few days for her to receive his article and work out the theoretical explanation of what had happened? The addition of such an explanation would have made the paper far more professional and scholarly. These questions continue to overhang Hahn's legacy.
Let us consider, then, the Hahn-Strassmann article which was published by Rosbaud on January 6, 1939. On the face of it it is an awkward, incomplete and hesitant piece of work. Hahn pulled his punches and stepped back from the conclusions that were implied by the experimental results. He apparently lacked the courage of his own convictions, making his rush to publish look all the more nakedly opportunistic.
The article begins with the title,
"Ueber den Nachweis und das Verhalten der bei der Bestrahlung des Urans mittels Neutronen entstehenden Erdalkalimetalle"
("On the Detection and Behavior of Alkaline Earth Elements Derived from the Neutron-Irradiation of Uranium").
It should better have read "Barium" rather than "Alkaline Earth Elements." The entire course of experiment had been about the baffling presence of barium. Why not say as much? Bear in mind he later received a Nobel Prize precisely because he had produced barium.
The article then proceeds in a hesitant, subjunctive mood: "we ought to...," "we should...," "there could be...," and weakest of all, "we cannot bring ourselves...to take such a drastic step." The facts reported in the article point squarely to barium, i.e., to the splitting of the uranium nucleus, but Hahn lacked sufficient confidence (or courage) to say it. The article cries out for the theoretical explanation that Lise Meitner could have given.
The article concludes on this limpid note:
Als Chemiker muessten wir aus den kurz dargelegtenVersuchen das oben gebrachte Schema eigentlich unbenennen und statt Ra, Ac, Th die Symbole Ba, La, Ce einsetzen. Als der Physik in gewisser Weise nahestehende "Kernchemiker" koennen wir uns zu diesem, allen bisherigen Erfahrungen der Kernphysik widersprechenden, Sprung noch nicht entschliessen. Es koennten doch noch vielleicht eine Reihe selstsamer Zufaelle unsere Ergebnisse vorgetaeuscht haben.
[As chemists we should restate the above-mentioned scheme resulting from our briefly-described experiment and instead of Ra [radium], Ac[actinium], Th[thorium] insert the symbols Ba [barium], La [lanthanum], Ce[cerium]. As "nuclear chemists" working close to the field of physics we are not ready to take this step, which contradicts all previous experience of nuclear physics. It could perhaps be that an unusual series of coincidences has falsified our results.]
Believe it or not this cautious article, this blatant hedging of his bet, this steadfast refusal to say, "we have split the atom," won the Nobel Prize for Hahn. Other factors may have entered in, but this was the springboard to the prize.
The explanation Hahn craved and could not himself give was in fact given by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch 2 days after Hahn completed and submitted his article. Meitner and Frisch met in Kungalv for their Christmas holiday week, and on the morning of December 24, Christmas eve day, began to discuss Otto Hahn's letter of December 19. They had not yet even received and read his letter of December 21 or the manuscript copy of his article. The December 19 letter sufficed, however, to show Meitner and Frisch that Hahn had apparently split a uranium nucleus.
On that December 24 morning, in a scene that might have come out of a Hollywood movie, Frisch put on his new cross-country skis and Lise put on her hiking boots and the two of them set out on a tour through the snowy Kungalv countryside. As they progressed along the trail they tried to make sense of what Hahn had reported. How was it possible to form barium out of uranium? As their conversation gained momentum their tour lost momentum and they sat down on a log along the trail. Lise pulled out some scraps of paper from her bag and they began to calculate and draw diagrams.
In a short time the two of them had taken a giant step: using the metaphor proposed by Niels Bohr which suggests that an atomic nucleus is like a drop of water they asked, what if that drop should pull or be pulled apart into two separate drops? It happens easily with water when shaken. Could it happen to a nucleus when hit and de-stabilized by a neutron? Suppose it did and the two drops were pushed apart by the mutual repulsion of their respective collections of protons. Frisch, a better draftsman than Meitner, diagrammed how it might look. They realized, however, that it would take enormous energy to push the fragments apart, so Meitner, a better calculator than Frisch, began to calculate. She concluded that it would take 200 million electron volts to push the two nuclear fragments apart. Now where might that energy come from? Was such energy available in the nucleus? Meitner remembered some earlier numbers concerning the mass defects of nuclei and calculated that when a nucleus splits in two it loses one-fifth the mass of a proton. Then in a beautiful application of Einstein's equation E = mc² she calculated that loss of the mass of one-fifth of a proton would generate approximately 200 million electron volts of energy, just enough to push the two drops of the nucleus apart. It all fit together. It must have been a thrilling moment for the two of them.
Meitner and Frisch thus had derived the theoretical explanation of Hahn's and Strassmann's experimental results precisely three days after Meitner received Hahn's letter of December 19 and two days following the submission of Hahn's article to Der Naturwissenschaften. As they sat in Kungalv continuing to discuss their conclusions they did not know that Hahn's article was due to be published on January 6. Unlike Hahn, they did not rush to publish.
Among other reasons, Frisch wanted first to take their results back to Copenhagen and discuss them with Niels Bohr. He did so on January 3. In a scene one would die to have witnessed, Bohr slapped his forehead and exclaimed, "Oh what idiots we have all been! Oh but this is wonderful! This is just as it must be!" On that same day Meitner received the revised proofs of Hahn's article and wrote to him acknowledging that she was now certain that he had split the uranium nucleus and produced barium. Three days later, on Friday, January 6, 1939, Meitner and Frisch worked out the outline of their paper on the telephone and Frisch thereupon drafted it. Ironically, this draft of the Meitner-Frisch paper explaining the result was written on the same day that the Hahn-Strassmann paper was published reporting the result. So close yet so far.
In the course of the next week, the week beginning January 9, Frisch constructed and conducted an experiment designed to test the conclusions he and Meitner had reached by searching for telltale nuclear fragments that would indicate the nucleus had split. He began his measurements on that Friday, January 13. The results showed the anticipated fragments and confirmed the theoretical model he and Meitner had developed.
In the immediate aftermath of his experiment Frisch had a chance conversation with one William A. Arnold who was a visiting biologist from the Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California. Frisch asked Arnold what biologists call it when cells divide. Arnold said "binary fission." Frisch dropped the "binary" and adopted the "fission," thus arriving at the name by which the process of splitting the nucleus has ever since been known, "nuclear fission." Thanks to a Californian.
Meitner and Frisch now had a theory, experimental confirmation of the theory and a new name for the process explained by the theory. Unlike Hahn they had not precipitously rushed to publish, and as a result they had a more satisfying article to present. Meitner and Frisch again conferred by telephone and agreed on the final form of their paper. In addition, Frisch separately wrote up the results of his experiment. Frisch finished the drafting of both papers on Monday, January 16, and mailed them to the journal Nature in London the following morning. The Meitner-Frisch paper, "Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: a New Type of Nuclear Reaction," wherein the name "nuclear fission" appeared for the first time in print, was published in Nature on February 11, 1939, just 36 days after the publication of Hahn's and Strassmann's paper.
I have spelled out these dates in order to illustrate the essential unity of the combined work of Meitner, Frisch, Hahn and Strassmann. They did their work in same time frame and would have done it in the same location had not the Nazis driven Meitner out of Berlin. All of their efforts were directed at the same subject and their work was complementary. Hahn and Strassmann produced the physical results in the laboratory but could not explain them. Indeed, they doubted them. Meitner and Frisch took over the results and created the theoretical framework which explained them and in so doing laid the foundation for the nuclear age. Had Hahn acted with a little bit more courtesy, consideration and collegiality their combined work would have been presented and published in a unified article and science would have been the better for it. Instead, Hahn jumped the gun and in retrospect made himself seem crassly opportunistic. He acted not in the interests of science, but in his own interest.
From this complex mix of experimental and theoretical work by four German scientists five errant Swedes plucked out Hahn alone for recognition and gave him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. From the date his paper was prematurely published, January 6, 1939, until the end of his life Hahn played the Bonze and sought recognition to the exclusion of his three colleagues, especially of Lise Meitner. If the five Swedes wished to honor him alone he was fine with that. He did, in fairness, give a nod, however minimal, in Meitner's direction in his Nobel Lecture of December 13, 1946, but later on when, as a laureate, he was entitled to participate in the Nobel Prize process he did not do what a man with better character would have done -- press for an award of the physics prize to Lise.
(The records of the Nobel Prize deliberations by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science are kept closed for 50 years following an award. The records of the award to Hahn were opened to scholars in 1996 and were the subject of an extensive article reviewing the process by Elizabeth Crawford, Ruth Lewin Sime and Mark Walker, "A Nobel Tale of Postwar Injustice," Physics Today, Volume 50, Issue 9, 26 - 32 (1997). )
Looking back now 40 years after her death, Lise Meitner's reputation has grown and continues to grow, while Hahn's reputation remains tarnished by the one-sided award of the Nobel Prize and his opportunistic and selfish conduct before and after the award. Unjust though the denial of the Nobel Prize was, Lise Meitner has been honored in many, many other ways: numerous German schools and streets bear her name; element 109 in the periodic table is called "meitnerium;" both Germany and Austria have issued Lise Meitner stamps;
a crater on Venus has been named for her;
likewise a crater on the moon; she received the Max Planck Medal (with Hahn), the Otto Hahn Prize (!) and the Enrico Fermi Award (with Hahn and Strassmann); and in 1946, the year Hahn received the Nobel Prize, she was named Woman of the Year in the U.S. by the Women's National Press Club and was seated next to Harry S Truman, President of the United States, at the award banquet.
(MTNR 8/2/1, Courtesy of Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge)
Posted by Ed Stadum at 11:55 PM
Labels: albert einstein, anschluss, fritz strassmann, lise meitner, nobel prize for chemistry 1944, nuclear fission, otto hahn, otto robert frisch, paul rosbaud
Lise Meitner Remembered -- the 40th Anniversary of...
Ed Stadum
Born in Fargo, raised in Berkeley, living in Munich. BA Stanford, JD Harvard, LL.M. Uni Konstanz .


When Putin cites Israel as an example in the fight against terrorism, before the experts of the planet
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered before the discussion club Valdai a speech with the theme "Future begins today: the lines of the world of tomorrow." He took the opportunity to respond to criticism of the Russian operation in Aleppo. Should we rejoice, the Russian president mentioned Israel's struggle for survival. A fight which he must set an example in the international struggle against terrorism.
"We always hear: Aleppo, Aleppo, Aleppo. But yes ! And what is the problem. (...) If we do not touch it, then it must be the same with the offensive on Mosul. Allowed to flow. Do not touch in Raqqa. For our European partners continue to talk about the offensive Raqqa and the need to liquidate the nest of terrorism. But there are also civilians there, Raqqa! So we no longer struggle against the terrorists? When they take hostage of civilians in any city, is dropped? The example of Israel is to follow. They never act in this way. They survive thanks to this, and they do not have a choice. We must fight. If every time we give in the ground, we will lose, "said Vladimir Putin.
Israel's evocation Putin is double-edged. On the one hand, Jerusalem is proud to arouse the admiration of the Kremlin master in the fight against terrorism. On the other hand, compare the strong-arm methods and indiscriminate Russian army in Syria is not very flattering to the Jewish state that prides itself to have the most moral army in the world.
The 13th conference of the Valdai Club was held from October 24 to 27 in Sochi. Established in September 2004, the Club Valdai international discussion brings together every year political analysts from different countries and covers topics including discussion allows foreign participants to better understand Russia. This year, more than 130 experts participated in the discussion club.
Aleppo,EU,Israel,Putin,Raqqa,Russia
For Turkey, a friendship with Russia is allowing Ankara to make gains in Syria that its alliance with the United States was unable to offer, writes Turkey expert David Barchard.
THIS COMING WEEK, it will be exactly 13 months since Russia moved militarily into Syria.
At the time, Russia's brilliant, if ruthless, move on the strategic chessboard infuriated Turkey. It seemed to block the way for the military incursion campaign that Ankara still dreamt of to dislodge President Bashar al-Assad and replace him with a Sunni-led united Syria. Russia, too, seems to have believed at the start of this year that it would face the united opposition of Turkey and Saudi Arabia in Syria.
But as things have turned out, Russia's entry into Syria eventually unblocked the three-year stalemate for Turkey - after it had done a volte-face of its own and President Erdogan reached an understanding with President Vladimir Putin in June.
That deal was probably inspired by a Turkish need to restore normal economic relations with Russia, but it swiftly turned out to be a winning compromise for it in Syria as well.
Striking the Kurds
At the present, though Russia is securely entrenched in the western areas of the country ruled by Assad and unlikely ever to be dislodged, Turkey, with Putin's approval, now has tanks and soldiers in the north of the country. The long-frustrated Turkish dream of a "safe zone" for refugees running 55 miles (90km) westward from Jarabulus now seems to be realizable.
More importantly, Turkey is also able to simultaneously tackle the two threats it sees on its southern borders: the autonomous Syrian Kurdish enclaves and the Islamic State (I.S.) militant group.
Borrowing the tactics of the U.S.-led coalition against I.S., its planes bomb the Syrian Kurds while its local allies in the Free Syrian Army fight them on the ground, pressing on Tel Rifaat and Marea, and the outlying Kurdish enclave of Afrin, and also Manbij, the town recently captured from I.S. by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
With the Kurds excluded, Ankara hopes to work inside the U.S.-led coalition in a coming assault on the I.S. capital of Raqqa, an outcome that accords well with Russia's strategic goals in Syria.
Each major move by Turkey seems to be preceded by a direct telephone conversation between the two presidents, indicating that, though each has probably told the other the general outlines of the new order that they intend to create in Syria, they still need to be sure of the other's specific acquiescence.
Strategic breakthrough
A year ago, Putin probably would not have relished the idea of a Turkish-backed Sunni zone in much of Syria - and his ally Bashar al-Assad must detest it.
But, if I.S.'s hold on northeastern Syria does crumble under the Turkey-backed onslaught on it, some sort of stable authority is likely to emerge in place of the present fragmentation as Turkey and its allies consolidate their hold in the north and Turkey acts as its guarantor.
More importantly, Putin knows that cooperation with Turkey is beginning to glue it into a long-term partnership with Russian interests. It is not simply that Turkey's relations with the U.S. and NATO are tense and mutually suspicious, and steadily deteriorating.
The arrival of Russia in Syria could be its biggest strategic breakthrough since the distant times when it arrived on the Black Sea in 1774. It transforms the strategic balance in the Eastern Mediterranean region, effectively encircling Turkey and pruning its strategic importance to its Western allies.
This might have started alarm bells ringing in Ankara under many earlier governments but today, the eyes of government strategists and commentators in the Turkish capital are almost exclusively focused on eliminating opponents of its Sunni allies in both Syria and Iraq and then building those groups up in the medium term into stable frontline political entities working closely with Turkey.
Having been frustrated from gaining this prize for so long and paid such a huge cost, it is understandable that Ankara is determined not to miss it now.
Two Syrias
So what we are seeing in Syria seems like a drift toward the emergence of two zones of influence: a Russian-backed littoral state under Assad, claiming to be the sole government of the country, and a "Free Syria" backed by Turkey.
This might sound a bit like Cold War Germany, but perhaps a better parallel, and a more Middle Eastern one, is the division of Iran into Russian and British zones of influence before World War I.
This depends, of course, on the four-months-old Russian-Turkish understanding continuing. Not all Russian observers are confident that it will. The red line it seems Turkish forces must not cross is al-Bab, the strategic town currently occupied by I.S. 35 miles (55km) to the north of Aleppo. Turkey struck this week at Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) forces close to al-Bab, frustrating possible Kurdish moves to gain the upper hand there.
Some of Erdogan's supporters, particularly the Turkish affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood and other conservatives, have been urging him ever since August to move on al-Bab, and speeches he has given suggest he is warm toward the idea. "They tell us not to go to al-Bab, but we are obliged to go down there," he said in a speech at Bursa on 22 October.
Deal on Aleppo
If - and it is a big "if" because such a move looks dangerous in military terms - Turkish allies and perhaps even its troops do move toward Aleppo, Turkey's relations with Russia will come under serious strain. Putin needs to find some sort of deal over the city, giving Turkey's public the impression of at least a token gain.
Turkey has, however, shown willingness to respect Russian sensitivities in Aleppo by agreeing to remove al-Nusra Front militants from the town in a telephone conversation between Erdogan and Putin. The partnership with Russia looks like a way for Turkey to achieve a slightly scaled-down version of its long-term policy aims in Syria, something the U.S. could not provide.
On 23 October, Erdogan told the Russian TV channel Rossiya-1: "I need the support of my respected and valuable friend Putin in the joint struggle against terrorism in this region. We are ready to take every step necessary to cooperate with Russia in this area." Russian-Turkish friendship is new but it may be more than a short-lived marriage of convenience.
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye and is reprinted here with permission
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Syria Deeply.
newdeeply
Assad,Erdoğan,Putin,Russia,Syria,Turkey
In Russian media blitz, PM warns Israel won't let Iran open Golan front
Rhonda Ballance News Editor. E-mail: Rhonda.Ballance@Scofieldinstitute.org
Ahead of Putin meeting, Netanyahu says Tehran cannot be allowed to use Hezbollah as a proxy to attack Jewish state
Israel will not let Iran use the Hezbollah terror group to turn the Syrian side of the Golan Heights border into a new front, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian media outlets in comments published Tuesday.
Netanyahu, who is on a two-day visit to Moscow, told the state-run Interfax news service and TASS news agency ahead of the talks that he would do everything in his power to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold in Syria, and intended to ask Russia for help in curbing the threat from Hezbollah.
"We have a red line, a boundary that we will not allow to be broken. Iran will not be allowed, using Hezbollah, to use Syrian territory to attack us and open up another terrorist front against us in the Golan," Netanyahu told TASS ahead of a meeting with Putin on Tuesday afternoon  -  their fourth round of talks in recent months.
The two leaders were expected to continue their ongoing discussion over security coordination between the Russian and the Israeli armies, especially their so-called deconflicting mechanism, installed to assure the Israel Defense Forces does not strike Russian jets operating in Syrian airspace.
"We have made a point of staying out of the Syrian conflict, with two exceptions: treating wounded Syrians on a humanitarian basis and preventing Iran from using Syria to attack Israel or to transfer sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah," Netanyhau noted. "We don't know what will come of Syria, but in any arrangement, it cannot be an Iranian base for terrorism and aggression," he told Interfax.
A Hezbollah fighter looks toward Syria while standing in the fields of the Lebanese border village of Brital, Lebanon, May 9, 2015. (photo credit: AP/Bassem Mroue)
"Israel will continue to share its concerns with the Russian government regarding Hezbollah. This terrorist group has called for the murder of every Jew and therefore must be prevented from acquiring advanced weaponry from anyone. Hezbollah launched thousands of missiles at our civilians and we will not allow them to amass even more sophisticated weaponry on our border."
Netanyahu and Putin were also to mark 25 years of Israeli-Russian diplomatic relations, which were reestablished in January 1992, 25 years after the Soviet Union severed them in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War.
"Russia is an important global power and Israel is an important regional power. President Putin and I understand the value of the ties between our two countries, which have steadily improved over the last quarter of a century. Our relationship has enhanced Russia-Israel cooperation and I expect that this trip will only add to that," Netanyahu told the Russian media.
"Our coordination mechanism has already proven itself. We would both benefit from strengthening it further."
During Netanyahu's visit, Jerusalem and Moscow were also to sign a bilateral pensions agreement, which seeks to "correct a historic injustice regarding emigres from the former USSR up to 1992 who lost their eligibility for a Russian pension," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement Sunday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on April 21, 2016, (Courtesy)
The agreement, which will only take effect after Russian authorities ratify it, was to be signed by former immigration and absorption minister Ze'ev Elkin and Russian Labor and Social Protection Minister Maxim Topilin. Payments to Soviet-born Israelis are expected to commence next year.
Tuesday's meeting in the Kremlin is the fourth contact between the two leaders in less than a year. Netanyahu visited the Russian capital in September 2015 and in April 2016. In addition, the two briefly got together last November on the sidelines of the Paris climate conference. In comparison, in the same time frame, Netanyahu has only met twice with US President Barack Obama.
Golan Heights,Hezbollah,Iran,Israel,PM Benjamin Netanyahu,Putin,Security,Syria
Report: Netanyahu to reach out to Moscow over peace talks
Netanyahu likely to approach Putin about presenting a united front in the event of French-brokered talks, political source claims.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is traveling to Moscow next week - possibly to realign Israel's alliances with Russia after the Paris peace talk conference, a top political source claimed late Thursday.
"There's a possibility that Binyamin Netanyahu will try to harness Russian President Vladimir Putin for the peace process," the source stated to Maariv.
Whether or not Netanyahu will approach Putin over the issue will depend on the final outcome of Friday's Paris conference, the source said.
Either way, "obviously, the Palestinian issue and developments in the Middle East will be raised in conversation, as well as the war in Syria and of course economic cooperation between the two countries."
Netanyahu will make the visit Monday in honor of 25 years of the resumption of diplomatic talks between Moscow and Jerusalem.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Paskov said that Netanyahu and Putin will discuss - among other things - the continued implementation of border security coordination with Syria and a number of economic issues.
The spokesman did not address the question of whether they will discuss the French initiative and broach the subject of Russia's position regarding the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
Netanyahu himself continues to resist the entire idea of the conference on the grounds that it allows the Palestinians to avoid direct negotiations with Israel.
Russia, along with Britain, are not attending the conference.
Such a move would reflect Jerusalem's budding alliance with Moscow, days after Putin returned a tank to Israel after Netanyahu made the request to Putin during their meeting in the Kremlin earlier this year. During the same meeting, the two reached an agreement to coordinate their actions in Syria.
Netanyahu appears to be reaching out to eastern countries - not only Russia, but also China, Japan, and India - in light of Europe's insistence on supporting sanctions against Israel and on backing the Palestinian Authority (PA), as well as the US's bumbling foreign policy in the Middle East during the administration of US President Barack Obama.
Israel,PM Benjamin Netanyahu,President Vladimir Putin,Putin


Archive | Israel
Canadian Prime Minister Harper on Israel
By David Bernstein on January 20, 2014 2:28 pm in Israel
I think President Obama has been better to Israel than his critics acknowledge, and has been very pro-Israel by any standard except perhaps that of the prior two presidents, who were the most pro-Israel of any American presidents. But it's hard to imagine him giving a speech like this:
"It is a Canadian tradition to stand for what is principled and just, regardless of whether it is convenient or popular," he said to the Israeli parliament.
But "support today for the Jewish state of Israel is more than a moral imperative. It is also of strategic importance, also a matter of our own long-term interests," he elaborated, praising Israel's record on human rights and economic freedom. "Israel is the only country in the Middle East which has long anchored itself in the ideals of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. These are not mere notions. They are the things that, over time and against all odds, have proven to be the only ground in which human rights, political stability, and economic prosperity, may flourish. These values are not proprietary; they do not belong to one nation or one people. Nor are they a finite resource; on the contrary, the wider they are spread, the stronger they grow."
"Likewise, when they are threatened anywhere, they are threatened everywhere," Harper continued. And "what today threatens the societies that embrace such values and the progress they nurture? Those who scorn modernity, who loathe the liberty of others, and who hold the differences of peoples and cultures in contempt. Those who often begin by hating the Jews, but, history shows us, end up hating anyone who is not them. Those forces which have threatened the State of Israel every single day of its existence, and which, today, as 9-11 graphically showed us,
CWRU President and Provost Reject Academic Boycott of Israel
By Jonathan H. Adler on December 27, 2013 8:55 am in Academia, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities, Israel
In a statement e-mailed to faculty and other members of the university community, Case Western Reserve University President Barbara Snyder and Provost Bud Baeslack forcefully rejected calls for an academic boycott of Israel. As they note, academic boycotts of this sort run contrary to principles of academic freedom and "seek to subvert one of higher education's core values in service of other ends." I've reproduced their entire statement below the fold. [...]
Northwestern Can't Quit ASA Over Boycott Because it is Not a Member
By Eugene Kontorovich on December 22, 2013 11:58 am in Academia, Anti-Semitism, Freedom of Speech, Israel
Northwestern University recently condemned the American Studies Association boycott of Israel. Unlike some other schools that quit their institutional membership in the ASA over the boycott, Northwestern has not. Many of my Northwestern colleagues were about to start urging a similar withdrawal.
Then we learned from our administration that despite being listed as in institutional member by the ASA, the university has, after checking, concluded it has no such membership, does not plan to get one, and is unclear why the ASA would list us as institutional member.
Apparently, at least several other schools listed by the ASA as institutional members say they have no such relationship.
The ASA has been spending a great deal of energy on political activism far from its mission, but apparently cannot keep its books in order. The association has yet to explain how it has come to list as institutional members so many schools that know nothing about such a membership. The ASA's membership rolls may get much shorter in the coming weeks even without any quitting.
How this confusion came to arise is unclear. ASA membership, like that of many academic organizations, comes with a subscription to their journal. Some have suggested that perhaps the ASA also counts as members any institution whose library happened to subscribe to the journal, ie tacking on membership to a subscription, rather than vice versa. This would not be fair on their part. A library may subscribe to all sorts of journals for academic research purposes (ie Pravda), without endorsing the organization that publishes it. That is the difference between subscription and membership.
I eagerly await the ASA's explanation of the situation. [...]
Northwestern University Rejects Israel Boycotts
By Eugene Kontorovich on December 21, 2013 11:15 am in Academia, Israel, Law Schools
I am proud to say Northwestern University has strongly rejected the American Studies Association and other proposed boycotts of Israel, and reaffirmed its ties to Israel institutions. The following statement was released Friday by Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro and Provost Dan Linzer (emphasis mine):
Recently the membership of the American Studies Association approved a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli higher education institutions. Two other U.S. academic associations have also advocated that stance. While we support the right of academicians to voice their viewpoints, Northwestern University disagrees strongly with the boycott vote of the ASA. Northwestern also rejects the actions suggested in the resolution. In fact, we believe the ASA resolution directly contradicts the values of academic freedom and advancing scholarship for which Northwestern stands.
Northwestern University faculty and students should have the ability to pursue academic collaborations with their colleagues at institutions around the world, including Israel. Northwestern for years has had highly successful and valued joint degree programs and extensive partnerships with Israeli institutions and scholars. We intend to maintain and strengthen relationships such as these.
American Studies Association Faces Consequences from its Boycott
By David Bernstein on December 18, 2013 7:06 pm in Academia, Israel
I previously posted about the proposed boycott of Israeli institutions by the American Studies Association, which was approved by a vote of its membership over the weekend. The boycott is pretty lame; it's supposed to be in solidarity with the international boycott movement advocated by Palestinian "civil society" organizations, which calls for a complete cultural and economic boycott of Israel. Instead, the ASA is only boycotting official Israeli institutions, and announced that it is inviting Israeli and Palestinian scholars to its next meeting-the exact sort of cultural exchange that opponents of the boycott typically advocate. (Hopefully, no self-respecting Israeli will show up).
Nevertheless, the boycott vote is intended to aid the cause of delegitimizing Israel, and raises the question of whether American universities should continue collaborating with the ASA-by the very logic of the boycott, any individual or organization that works with the "official" ASA, as opposed to individual American Studies scholars, is complicit in the ASA's attempt to aid the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement. The question is especially pressing for American universities that have formal ties to Israeli universities, as the ASA is implicitly boycotting the joint programs. Moreover, given that the boycott of Israel has nothing to do with American Studies, the association seems to have revealed itself to be a political, rather than solely academic, organization, which raises the issue of why university funds should be flowing to it.
Legal Insurrection's William Jacobson is organizing a campaign to lobby the universities that are institutional sponsors of the ASA to drop their memberships. So far Brandeis University and Penn State Harrisburg have announced they are doing so, pretty impressive given that the boycott was only announced two days ago. Look for more universities to follow, substantial resignations from the rank and file, and more. But don't worry, [...]
Israel, Palestine, and Democracy
By Eugene Kontorovich on December 17, 2013 12:37 pm in Democracy, International Law, Israel
At Commentary, I have a new piece on the common argument that Israel must make a deal with the Palestinians to save itself as a democracy. Here is an excerpt:
The "democracy" argument has become the central justification of the diplomatic process, incessantly invoked by Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli peace envoy Tzipi Livni. What makes the democracy argument effective is that it plays on deep-seated Jewish sentiments. Israelis are a fundamentally liberal, democratic people who desperately do not wish to be put in the role of overlords.
The problem with the democracy argument is that it is entirely disconnected from reality. Israel does not rule the Palestinians. The status quo in no way impeaches Israel's democratic identity.
It is true that the Palestinians are not represented in the Knesset. But Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria are similarly not represented in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Simply put, both the Palestinians and Israelis vote for the legislature that regulates them. That is democracy (though obviously it does not play out as well in the Palestinian political system).
The Palestinians have developed an independent, self-regulating government that controls their lives as well as their foreign policy. Indeed, they have accumulated all the trappings of independence and have recently been recognized as an independent state by the United Nations. They have diplomatic relations with almost as many nations as Israel does. They have their own security forces, central bank, top-level Internet domain name, and a foreign policy entirely uncontrolled by Israel.
The Palestinians govern themselves. To anticipate the inevitable comparison, this is not an Israeli-puppet "Bantustan." From their educational curriculum to their television content to their terrorist pensions, they implement their own policies by their own lights without any subservience to Israel. They pass their own legislation, such as the
BDS Advocate Roger Waters Holds Some Strange Views about Jews
By David Bernstein on December 9, 2013 3:35 am in Anti-Semitism, Israel
Last week I wrote about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel and the tenuous foothold it is getting in the American academy. I also happened to read an article that led me to think about how some individuals are so convinced that Israel is obviously evil that he believes that something must be amiss with "the Jews" if so many of them not only can't see what he sees, but actively defend the evil state. Whether the fact that it doesn't occur to him that a reasonable person might disagree with his understanding of Israel is itself a reflection of preexisting latent anti-Jewish prejudice or is simply the hallmark of a dogmatic ideologue who is not immune to anti-Jewish feelings assumedly depends on the individual in question.
Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) has helpfully pulled the two things I was thinking about together. Waters is perhaps the most outspoken Western artist who supports the BDS movement, and is very active in attempts to get others to boycott Israel.
Given some controversial imagery he has used at his concerts, has been at pains to deny that he is at all motivated by anti-Semitism. Here he is in September, in an interview with the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahoronot:
"I absolutely defend my right to express myself in my artwork in the way that I find the most appropriate and fitting. The Star of David is the symbol of the state of Israel. If you start to throw around the term "anti-Semite" at everyone who criticizes Israel - and that's what they're actually doing - that weakens your next attack on people who really are anti-Semites, ones that really don't like Jews or Judaism or anything connected with it. I'm not an anti-Semite."
"Two years ago, I explained
Interesting Essay on Jews who Oppose Israel
By David Bernstein on December 6, 2013 8:49 am in Israel, Jewish Culture
Shlomo Fischer in the Times of Israel:
I suggest that in fact, they [ultra-Orthodox and leftists who are hostile to the existence of Israel] do share a common Jewish theme. This theme was articulated by the great Israeli scholar of the Jewish religion, Gershom Scholem, who argued that the price that the Jewish people paid for their development of the Messianic idea was their own "exit from history." During the long history of the Exile the Jewish people imagined a Messianic, redeemed world of perfect justice, perfect national restoration, perfect relationship to God and religious observance. They could develop this idea precisely because they were removed from "history" - they could not participate as a national collective in world politics, in world culture and in the endeavors of building a state, developing a national economy etc. Thus, on the national level they did not have to deal with the inevitable, mistakes, compromises and wickedness which is necessarily part of any concrete action in the world. Instead they could develop one of the most important Jewish contributions to the human spirit - The Messianic Idea. But, as Scholem points out, there was something profoundly unreal about Jewish life in the Exile.
Zionism was one of the most profound revolutions in Jewish life. It constitutes, as Scholem defined it, a departure from the Messianic Idea to the realm of history. Once Jews enter the realm of history by building a Jewish state they necessarily become implicated in a life that is less than ideal - they become implicated - simply by the fact of action in the real world - in injustice, in moral compromises, corruption and other ills and wrongs. They can no longer cling to the perfect justice and perfect religion of the Messianic Idea. But here is the rub:
The American Studies Association and the Pending, Watered Down, Israel Boycott
By David Bernstein on December 5, 2013 5:38 pm in Academia, Israel
I wrote this for the Manhattan Institute's excellent Minding the Campus site, and figured I'd repost it here.
From the bowels of academia comes news that the National Council of the American Studies Association has voted in favor of boycotting Israeli institutions. The boycott resolution goes to the full membership for an up or down vote.
The National Council's vote has been hailed as a huge victory for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. It's not. As originally proposed, the boycott was to apply to individual Israeli scholars, who, for example, wished to participate in the ASA's annual conference, if they received Israeli government or university funding. Since few Israeli scholars would have the means to travel to the U.S. without funding from their university, that would have been a meaningful means of exclusion.
Instead, the final resolution is limited to a refusal to by "the ASA in its official capacities to enter into formal collaborations with Israeli academic institutions, or with scholars who are expressly serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions." So there is no call for a boycott by the membership acting as individuals, and no exclusion even by the ASA of normal cooperation with Israeli scholars.
Pretty Thin Gruel
Compared to the BDS movement's official call for a "comprehensive and consistent" boycott of anyone affiliated with an Israeli academic or cultural institution, this is pretty thin gruel, unlikely to affect almost anyone. Even then, to get the resolution through the executive committee advocates had to agree to a membership-wide vote.
So the good news is that even in the far-left reaches of American academia, in an organization proud to name one of its awards in honor of ex-Black Panther and ex-Soviet stooge Angela Davis (two-time vice-presidential candidate for the Soviet-controlled Communist Party USA), [...]
New Paper on International Criminal Court's Jurisdiction over Israeli Settlements
By Eugene Kontorovich on December 1, 2013 3:00 pm in Global Governance/World Government, International Law, Israel, National Security, War and Armed Conflict
My paper, Israel/Palestine  -  The ICC's Uncharted Territory, has just been published in the Journal of International Criminal Justice. It explains that the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction over the oft-threatened and much-discussed Palestinian referral of Israeli settlements, despite the General Assembly's recognition of Palestine as a non-member state. In brief, the relevant conduct does not occur "in the territory" of Palestine as required by Art. 12 of the Court's Statute. Abstract here.
The article also provides perhaps the most comprehensive analysis thus far of the ICC's territorial jurisdiction, which has thus far not caused much controversy, but could have significant implications for American forces in Guantanamo Bay, border incidents in the Koreas and elsewhere in Asia, and numerous other contexts.
The timing is fortuitous: Nabil Shaath, a top Palestinian official and negotiator, last week reemphasized threats to attempt to bring Israel before the ICC after the current negotiation period ends this spring. OK, not that fortuitous, as such threats come with considerable regularity, and it does appear this is Abba's next move.
A separate article will explain why such a case might not satisfy the ICC's requirement of dealing only with the gravest of the world's atrocities. (I say might, because it is anyone's guess; though the gravity threshold is a key component of the Court's jurisdiction, it remains entirely undefined.) Thinking about calling it "When Gravity Fails" but that might be too cute. [...]
The EU Supports Exploitation of Resources in the Occupied Territories
By Eugene Kontorovich on November 21, 2013 7:31 am in International Law, Israel
The Occupied Sawahari Territories that is (aka Western Sahara).
Global Post runs my commentary today on the European Union's new treaty with Morocco, which does everything the EU has been claiming in its increasingly hostile recent dealings with Israel that international law forbids. The EU's position regarding Western Sahara is consistent with its practice in Northern Cyprus and elsewhere.
The European Union recently affirmed that there is no international legal problem in signing a deal with an occupying power that extends to the territory it occupies, or from foreign companies doing business in occupied territory.
It did so when it provisionally approved a fisheries agreement earlier this month with Morocco that extends into the territory of occupied Western Sahara, which is beyond Morocco's recognized sovereign territory.
Moreover, the EU actually pays Morocco for European access to Western Saharan resources. On all these points, the agreement directly contradicts what the EU, in negotiations with Israel, calls fundamental principles of international law.
Forgetting the Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries
By David Bernstein on November 19, 2013 12:53 pm in Israel, Jewish Culture
My wife and I just attended a tour at the National Archives of the exhibit of Iraqi-Jewish documents that were rescued and preserved from the flooded basement of the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in 2003. My Iraqi-Jewish wife, along with many others, is very upset that these documents, having been stolen from the Jewish community, are being returned to Iraq. I wonder whether there is some law dealing with looted artifacts that can be invoked by a plaintiff (maybe someone who had owned one of the documents) to enjoin the documents' return.
Meanwhile, in a book review today of a book about Israel, Thomas Friedman writes, "[The author] then weaves in the next waves of immigrants, the broken survivors of World War II who joined up with the idealistic Zionists to rebuild the Jewish commonwealth in its ancient homeland." As in unfortunately often par for the course in discussions of Israel and Zionism, Friedman casually treats Israel in its early year as a conglomeration of early European Zionist immigrants and later European Holocaust refugees and survivors, neglecting the hundreds of thousands of Jews forced to flee Arab countries and make their way to Israel, including my parents-in-law. It's perhaps relatively easy to forget them, because unlike Arab refugees from the Israeli War of Independence they weren't herded into refugee camps and denied citizenship to better serve as political bargaining chips and human fodder for war and terrorism. But they and their descendants also constitute around half of Israel's population, and are, for obvious reasons, on average rather more suspicious of peace deals that rely on the Arabs' good will then are their Ashkenazi fellow citizens. The consistent neglect-even often in Israel-of their collective refugee trauma isn't conducive to peace. After all, how would you feel about, for example, proposed massive compensation [...]
Australia Anti-Discrimination Law and BDS at the University of Sydney Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (UPDATED)
By David Bernstein on November 2, 2013 1:58 pm in Israel
[I've rewritten this post to eliminate unwieldy updates and improve it-I relied too much on an incomplete account from Ha'aretz-but I've preserved the original at the end for anyone who's interested.]
An Israeli NGO, Shurat Ha'din, is suing an Australian academic, Jake Lynch, director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, for discrimination under Australian law because he refused to sponsor an Israeli professor, Dan Avnon, for a fellowship. Avnon, against whom Lynch discriminated, is, like many Israeli academics, apparently something of a lefty peacenik. Lynch sent Avnon the following email: "Your research sounds interesting and worthwhile. However, we are supporters of the campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and that includes the call for an academic boycott of Israeli universities."
This raises several interesting issues. If a public university offers a fellowship to anyone worldwide, can it constitute ethnic or national origin discrimination to refuse the fellowship only to individuals teaching at a certain nation's universities when the government in question maintains normal diplomatic (indeed, friendly) relations with that country? Does it matter if, for example, almost everyone who teaches as Israeli universities is Israeli? Does it matter if the policy would be applied to Israeli Arabs affiliated with Israeli universities and not just Israeli Jews (I'm pretty sure that if it only applied to the latter, it would constitute ethnic discrimination).
Lynch has publicly stated that "This center does not discriminate on the basis of 'national origin.' It acts by pointing to the policies of the Israeli government in the occupied territories ... which offend Article 5 of the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination." Let's say Lynch otherwise has a solid defense to discrimination charges. But given that he's stated this rationale, let's [...]
New Report on EU's "Settlement Guidelines" for Israel
By Eugene Kontorovich on October 18, 2013 8:00 am in Education, International Law, Israel
The Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem think tank, has released a legal and policy analysis, by Prof. Avi Bell and myself, of the European Commission's recent "settlement guidelines" - a ban on funding Israeli entities located across, or, more importantly, conducting any "activities" in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and Gaza. I've previously explained how the Guidelines' are not about either international law or the Palestinians, and how they contradict and undermine the EU's own practices elsewhere.
Israel and the EU are currently in the throes of negotiations about the document. The paper presents important new information for discussions of business and academic activities in occupied territories.
The report is available here; and this is from the Executive Summary:
•The Israel Grants Guidelines adopted by the European Commission are singularly discriminatory
against Israel. They contradict international law as established in U.N. documents and leading
court cases, as well as the European Union's own interpretations of international law.
• The EU provides aid and financial cooperation to numerous countries that maintain settlements
in what Europe considers occupied territory, such as Morocco, Turkey, and Russia. In none of these
cases has the Commission imposed limitations on the aid akin to the Guidelines for Israel.
• The Commission's position that the Guidelines are mandated by international law are further belied by EU programs that provide grants specifically for settlers in belligerently occupied territory, such as the EU's programs in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus.
• Under international law, there are no prohibitions regarding organizations engaging in "activities" in occupied territories, yet the Guidelines bar funding solely on the basis of such "activities."
• In pretending that the Guidelines fulfill the requirements of international law, the Commission
exposes the EU to legal challenge for EU funding of
How the EU Continues to Fund Settlements in Occupied Territory
By Eugene Kontorovich on September 30, 2013 2:00 pm in European Union, International Law, Israel
The EU recently issued guidelines blocking research and other grants to Israeli institutions with activities (archeological digs, etc.) across the Green Line. In the yesterday's Jerusalem Post I reveal that the EU continues to actively fund settlements in occupied territory, against their own understanding of international law:
Under guidelines prepared earlier this summer, euros would not be allowed to go to Israeli entities located cross the Green Line - or to those that have any operations there. All Israeli entities applying for funding would have to submit a declaration that they do not have such operations.
Europe claims that such a move - unparalleled in its dealings with any other country - is mandated by international law. The EU does not recognize Israel's sovereignty over the territories, and thus has an obligation to keep its money from going there. Those who celebrated the move said that Israel is finally paying the international price for its occupation.
Yet it turns out that despite the guidelines, the EU still knowingly and purposefully provides substantial direct financial assistance to settlements in occupied territory - in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, that is. So the EU funds the occupation of an EU member state. . . .
Projects include study abroad scholarships for students at the numerous Northern Cyprus universities (imagine such funding for students at Ariel University!); developing and diversifying the private sector through grants to small and medium- sized businesses; various kinds of infrastructure improvements (telecom upgrades, traffic safety, waste disposal); community development grants, funding to upgrade "cultural heritage" sites, and so forth. They even put on a concert.
Amazingly, this information has never been discussed in the debate over the EU action. On the contrary, academic supporters of the EU measure have falsely stated that "There is no significant difference in the [...]


Delaware - Bullying Policy Definitions: Policy or Plan Requirements
Policy Or Plan Requirements
regulation; statute
State law requires districts to adopt anti-bullying policies addressing some U.S. Department of Education-recommended policy requirements.
Delaware Administrative Code 14-624 School District/Charter School Policy Prohibiting Cyberbullying
2.0 Definition of Cyberbullying
2.1 Cyberbullying means the use of uninvited and unwelcome electronic communication directed at an identifiable student or group of students, through means other than face-to-face interaction, which (1) interferes with a student's physical well-being; or (2) is threatening or intimidating; or (3) is so severe, persistent, or pervasive that it is reasonably likely to limit a student's ability to participate in or benefit from the educational programs of the school district or charter school. Communication shall be considered to be directed at an identifiable student or group of students if it is sent directly to that student or group, or posted in a medium that the speaker knows is likely to be available to a broad audience within the school community.
2.2 Whether speech constitutes cyberbullying will be determined from the standpoint of a reasonable student of the same grade and other circumstances as the victim.
2.3 The place of origin of speech otherwise constituting cyberbullying is not material to whether it is considered cyberbullying under this policy, nor is the use of school district or charter school materials.
2.4 Upon implementation of this policy, and again at the beginning of each academic year, each school district and charter school shall inform students in writing of mediums where posting of speech will be presumed to be available to a broad audience within the school community, regardless of privacy settings or other limitations on those postings. From implementation of this policy through the end of the 2013-2014 school year, postings on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, and Pinterest shall be included in each district's and charter school's list of mediums where posting of speech will be presumed to be available to a broad audience within the school community, regardless of privacy settings or other limitations on those postings.
2.5 Nothing in this policy shall limit in any way a school district's or charter school's ability to regulate student conduct, including bullying, in any manner provided for by existing law, regulation, or policy.
16 DE Reg. 955 (03/01/13)
Delaware Code 14-4161 Definitions.
For purposes of this subchapter:
(1) "Bullying" means any intentional written, electronic, verbal, or physical act against another student, a school district or charter school volunteer, or a school district or charter school employee that a reasonable person under the circumstances should know will have any of the following effects:
a. Place a student, school district or charter school volunteer, or school district or charter school employee in reasonable fear of substantial harm to the student's, volunteer's, or employee's emotional or physical well-being or substantial damages to the student's, volunteer's, or employee's property.
b. Create a hostile, threatening, humiliating, or abusive educational environment due to the pervasiveness or persistence of actions or due to a power differential between the bully and the target.
c. Interfere with a student having a safe school environment that is necessary to facilitate educational performance, opportunities, or benefits.
d. Perpetuate bullying by inciting, soliciting, or coercing an individual or group to demean, dehumanize, embarrass, or cause emotional, psychological, or physical harm to another student, school district or charter school volunteer, or school district or charter school employee.
Delaware Administrative Code


Wanuri Kahiu
Full Name: Wanuri Kahiu
Country of Birth: Kenya
Industry: Film, TV and Theater
Speciality: Director
Wanuri Kahiu is a Kenyan film director. She has received several awards and nominations for the films which she directed, including the awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Picture at the African Movie Academy Awards in 2009.
Kahiu was born in Nairobi, Kenya. After graduating from the University of Warwick in 2001 with a BSc degree in Management Science, she enrolled for a Master's Degree program in directing at the School of Film and Television, University of California, Los Angeles. Her movie "From A Whisper" received a total of twelve nominations and earned five awards at the 5th African she received the Motion Pictures of America Associates Award (AMAA), and the Hollywood Foreign Press Award for distinguished director. "From A Whisper" is a story about the bombing of the American Embassy in Kenya. Seen through the eyes of people who were there, the film is compelling and highlights the pain and suffering that the local people went through as they grieved the loss of loved ones.
NEWS, BLOGS AND EVENTS


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Arbeidernes kommunistparti
(Workers' Communist Party, Norway)
Who we are ...
Other texts in English ||| AKP home page ||| E-mail us ||| Other languages:
Arbeidernes kommunistparti (AKP) is a revolutionary party working for a fundamental change (a revolution) of the way that Norway and the world is governed. Our goal is communism, a society without suppression and class distinctions, where a majority of the people - with the working class as the most important power - will govern.
Norway is a class society
In today's Norway capitalists hold the economic and political power. Investments, production, exploration of natural resources, trade and defence policy, laws and priorities at state and municipal level are in fact decided by this small minority.
In Norway this does not necessarily mean that the majority of the people suffer materially, but it does mean that society is ruled by the capitalist class. Their interest is in maximising their profits. This power structure applies in the rest of the world as well. Profit for the few decides life and death for the great majority of the global population and the future of our planet.
AKP's goal is communism
The AKP wants to be at tool for people working towards a society free from exploration, suppression and class distinctions. We define communism as a society devoid of class distinctions. In a communist society people will contribute to society according to their ability and receive according to need. Employment in the capitalist sense will not exist. This will also result in the disappearance of other forms of suppression.
Such a society is different from any we have seen so far and creating such a society will be challenging. However we believe that technological progress will make the realisation of such a society easier because technological developments makes it possible to produce the necessary economic surplus in less working hours - making it possible for the whole population to participate in the development and governing of the community.
Differences and conflicting interests will still be an important factor in this society as it continues to develop, but people will not be discriminated against because of the colour of their skin, which country they live in, religion, sex or sexual preferences. War will no longer be profitable and therefore unnecessary.
AKP's theoretical platform
The AKP studies Marxism in order to analyse our current society. But we also wish to develop these theories based on our own experiences. Marxism is a tool for analysing the world - in order to change it. It is not a religion, but at theory that must be developed and adapted to the society we live in. Marx and Engels showed how capitalism works on the economical level. Lenin analysed imperialism. Mao saw the power of mass movement and was also a pioneer in analysing the danger of a socialist country becoming capitalist and suppressive.
AKP develops its own policies that address the current situation in Norway
The world changes, and economic, philosophical and political theories must always be scrutinised and adjusted to fit the current situation. This is important because we wish to develop policies that address the situation in Norway today. The AKP has its foundations in Norwegian reality and in the Norwegian class struggle. This independence is an important reason of why the AKP survived the crisis of the international revolutionary movement. We believe that the Norwegian working class should work towards revolution in their own country. We are not waiting for "world revolution". The AKP co-operate with political parties and groups in over 70 countries, but AKP is not member of or part of any international organisation.
AKP is a feminist party
AKP is a feminist party working for a society without suppression of women. Women should organise and fight for their interest within organisations and movements, for example labour unions and parties - and of course within the AKP. We fight for the rights and demands of ordinary women whether it is the fight against pornography or for a six hour working day. Our party has developed new and important theories about women's position in society, both in capitalist and socialist societies.
AKP is an anti-imperialist and internationalist party
We support every nation's right for self determination and the right to use armed struggle as a means to this end. Supporting armed fights for liberation was unheard of in Norway when the AKP first fronted this position. Now it has become a more common view. The AKP has played an important role in the movements supporting the freedom struggles of the peoples of for example Palestine, Vietnam, Cambodia, Czechoslovakia, Ireland, Chile, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Nicaragua and Kurdistan.
Our support for people struggling against suppression is based on their right to liberate themselves and even though we might not agree with all their actions and believes, we defend their right to fight their suppressors.
Extracts from the
Peace and Antiwar Platform of the Workers' Communist Party (AKP), short version
The AKP works towards Norwegian resignation from Nato and the termination of Nato. Today this implies assembling a broad mass movement against "New Nato" and its reaction forces that can be engaged all over the world.
The AKP is opposed to any attempt to incorporate Norway in the military structures of the EU.
The AKP is opposed to restructuring Norway's armed forces into specialised support units for the military forces of the USA or the EU.
The AKP is opposed to sending Norwegian troops abroad. However we may support Norwegian participation in certain peace keeping missions, like the Unifil (Lebanon), where the the missions was supported by the population and UN troops acted as a buffer between the people and an occupying power.
The AKP advocates that Norway should denounce Nato's "out of area" strategy and oppose the creation of military units in Norway that are suitable for such operations.
The AKP opposes Norwegian support of aggressive wars - also if they are sanctioned by the UN, or are launched under the pretence of being a humanitarian intervention.
The AKP supports liberation wars fighting for national and social rights. As long as imperialism exists, there will be suppression and imperialist wars. The AKP position is that suppressed peoples and nations have the right to fight against suppression. They also have the right to armed defence against suppression and occupation. Today fighting for national and democratic liberation is an integrated part of the struggle against imperialism and for a socialist revolution.
The AKP promotes the political and social equality of national minorities and their right to practise their culture. The AKP want all people to unite across ethnical and national diversions, and stand against the "divide and conquer" policies of imperialism and local reactionary forces.
In most states there is more than one nation. We believe that in most cases these nations should develop mutual relations and form a democratic state based on equality for all. This does not undermine the fact that we believe that all minorities have the right to fight discrimination and other forms of suppression. This includes the right of suppressed nations to form their own state if they find this necessary in order to obtain equal rights.
AKP, Osterhaus' gate 27, N-0183 Oslo, Norway
,
+47 22 98 90 60, fax: +47 22 98 90 55


Public Research University-Beihang University
Home> Explore Universities > Beihang University
Beihang University, previously known as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics is a major public research university located in Beijing, China.
The university is a member of China's Project 211 and Project 985 group of key state universities, with a heavy focus on high-level technological and scientific research. BUAA was founded on October 25th, 1952, with an area of over 100 hectares.
Beihang University was formed in 1952 from a merger of the aeronautical departments of Tsinghua University, Peiyang University, Xiamen University, Sichuan University, Yunnan University, Northwestern Engineering College, North China University, and Southwest Aeronautical Institute.
Beihang University was among China's first 16 key universities in the 1950s and was among the top 15 for priority development during China's 7th Five-Year Plan period (1986-1990). During the 8th Five-Year plan it was listed among the top 14 for priority development, and at the start of the 9th Five-Year Plan BUAA was among the first batch of 15 universities in project 211 for Higher Education.