On Sunday, at the age of 98, Hans Bata passed away, one of the well-known physicists of the 20th century: a Nobel Prize winner for cracking the nuclear processes that occur in the cores of stars and the theorist of the Manhattan Project - the project to develop the first atomic bomb.
Nir Stav, a window to physics
On Sunday, at the age of 98, Hans Bata passed away, one of the well-known physicists of the 20th century: a Nobel Prize winner for cracking the nuclear processes that occur in the cores of stars and the theorist of the Manhattan Project - the project to develop the first atomic bomb.
Her daughter was born to a Jewish mother in Strasbourg in 1906, at a time when the area belonged to the German Empire. In 1928 he finished his doctoral thesis and then was a lecturer at several universities throughout Germany. But in 1933, with the rise of the Nazis to power, he lost his job. He moved to England, and after several years he moved to Cornell University (USA).
In the years leading up to World War II, he promoted the understanding of the nuclear fusion processes that occur in the cores of stars. In 1938, he published a well-known article in which he described a process - which today is called CNO - which produces carbon and oxygen in the cores of large stars, while releasing enormous amounts of energy. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967 for his work in the study of the physics of stars.
During World War II, he left the academy and became involved in the 'Manhattan' project - the code name for the secret American effort to develop the atomic bombs. Robert Oppenheimer appointed him as head of the group's theoretical department (much to Edward Teller's chagrin), the department that, among other things, performed the necessary calculations in order to design the bombs. After witnessing the terrible results of the bombing, her daughter became a staunch opponent of nuclear armament.
