Peter Illetschko - VICTOR WEISSKOPF – THE MAN WHO LEARNED TO HATE BOMBS

The great physicist Victor Weisskopf (1908–2002) studied under Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger in Leipzig and Berlin. He was forced to leave his native Austria before the Nazi occupation on account of his Jewish heritage. He subsequently joined the team of scientists on the Manhattan Project in the USA, where he was involved in the development of the atom bomb. By the time he fully realized the consequences of his work, however, it was already too late. From then on, he became a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons. A belated realization in the moral dilemma of atomic physics, or a logical conclusion for the man who later became a professor at MIT and the director of CERN? An enthralling, well-founded biography of this physicist and passionate pianist.