century science, particularly science and technology under National Socialism. His publications include The Kaiser Wilhelm Society during National Socialism (2009) and The German Physical Society in the Third Reich: Physicists between Autonomy and Accomodation (2012).
Walker applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Hitler's Atomic Bomb: History, Legend, and the Twin Legacies of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, and reported the following:
Page 99 describes part of a rivalry within the wartime German uranium project with regard to designing the best nuclear reactor. The established research group under the direction of the physicist Werner Heisenberg had been working with horizontal and spherical layer designs where uranium oxide or uranium powder and a neutron moderator (a substance that would slow down the neutrons) was arranged in alternating layers. These scientists were challenged by an upstart group of younger, less prestigious scientists who began designing three-dimensional lattices of uranium cubes embedded or immersed in moderator.Learn more about Hitler's Atomic Bomb at the Cambridge University Press website.
My book is a mixture of science and technology on one hand, politics and ideology on the other, and especially how they were intertwined. Page 99 happens to be devoted to the more technical side of this history, which is a necessary, but not sufficient part of the whole story.
Hitler’s Atomic Bomb has two parts, “The Bomb,” which investigates the German work on harnessing nuclear fission for military and economic goals during the war, and “Living with the Bomb,” how these scientists responded to criticism for having worked on such powerful weapons for the Third Reich and eventually managed to rehabilitate themselves by creating legends.
--Marshal Zeringue
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