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'Heavy Water' and the Fathers of Two LFNY Alumnaeby Roger Liwer ('68) Contributors: Irène Kowarsky (’53) and Georges Ripka (’55) In 1934, the Vermork plant outside Rjukan in Norway began producing heavy water which became a component of early nuclear energy. (In heavy water, the two hydrogen atoms of each water molecule are replaced by two deuterium atoms, which gives D2O instead of H2O.) In 1940, the French Government purchased the entire stock then available, of heavy water from Norway. The Germans had also offered to purchase it, but the Norwegian government was told of its possible military use and gave it to a French agent, who smuggled it to France via England. At that time, two physicists named Hans von Halban and Lew Kowarski were working on a team headed by Frédéric Joliot-Curie at the Collège de France in Paris, and doing research on nuclear fission and chain reactions. In May 1940, Halban and Kowarski left Paris with 26 drums of heavy water, the world’s entire stock at the time, and smuggled it to England. During the remainder of World War II and the German occupation of Norway, the heavy-water production plant was bombed and sabotaged by the Allies in order to prevent the Germans from making an atomic bomb. A Franco-Norwegian movie about the sabotage operation against the heavy water power plant was made in 1948, with many of the original participants in the adventure, and titled "La Bataille de l'Eau Lourde." Later, in 1965, director Anthony Mann made a Hollywood film version of the story entitled "The Heroes of Telemark" starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris. While doing routine Internet research on a former LFNY student --Catherine Maulde Von Halban ('57) (deceased July 11, 1993)-- several cross references were found that seemed to link the two above mentioned physicists to Catherine Maulde, and to another former LFNY student --Irène Kowarski ('53). As it turned out, Catherine Maulde and Irène are the daughters of the two physicists! In response to an inquiry sent to Irène to double-check this coincidence, she replied: "You really have done some research on us! Now I can complete your information. Yes, of course I am Lew Kowarski's daughter. I was on the boat with the heavy water, which left Bordeaux on June 17th (I think) to take it to Falmouth, and after that to the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge (England). On the same boat with my parents and myself there were Hans von Halban and his wife Els and daughter Maude, then a baby. Unfortunately I don't remember anything about this journey: I was not yet four years old. During the war my father and Halban worked in England, and in 1944 they went to Montreal, where my father built the first Canadian reactor at Chalk River. After the war we went back to France, and I don't know where the Halban family went. I must add that my father and Halban did not get along well together, that is not a secret! My mother and I moved to New York in 1949, she was Staff Counselor at the UN secretariat. I went to the Lycée from 1949 to 1953, when I passed my Bac and went back to France. There I studied computer science (informatique), and worked on applications to linguistics. I married and stayed in France. My father died in 1979. Around 1985 I went to a conference on computer aided linguistics in Dublin, and a lady saw my badge and said "Are you Lew Kowarski's daughter? I'm Maude Griffin, Halban's daughter!" She worked on publishing rare languages at the Oxford University Press. So we met again and I stayed at her house in Oxford once. Unfortunately she died prematurely of lung cancer a few years later. But I do not remember if we ever discussed the Lycée, or even if we knew that we had both been there." In yet another twist to this heavy water story, Georges Ripka ('55), a renowned nuclear physicist in his own right, had separately replied to our request for newsletter Class Notes submissions and informed us that he recently co-authored (with Bernard Fernandez) and written the English version of a book entitled "Unravelling the Mystery of the Atomic Nucleus" (Springer 2012). His book also refers to the above-mentioned story, as follows: “June 18, 1940: as the German troops advance, Joliot, Halban, and Kowarski retreat to Clermont-Ferrand, then to Bordeaux. From there, Halban and Kowarski go to England with the intention of pursuing research on the chain reaction. They take with them the world stock of heavy water. Joliot returns to Paris and he joins the Resistance and will become one of its leaders as president of the Front national de lutte pour la libération et l'indépendance de la France. Frederic Joliot and Irene Curie stop all nuclear research during the war. On the radio in London, General de Gaulle calls for resistance to the invader.” It’s a small world indeed!! |
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