Placzek: life and fate -- NKVD files of Konrad Weisselberg -- Placzek: correspondence -- Placzek's curriculum vitae (various years) -- Placzek in the literature, media, and recollections. Obituaries -- Jocular physics at Niels Bohr Institute.
Summary:
"This book presents the first detailed biography of George Placzek -- an outstanding physicist, a participant in the Manhattan Project who stood at the very inception of nuclear physics and the subsequent development of the nuclear bomb in the course of WWII. In the 1930s, George Placzek was known as an adventurous person with a sharp sense of humor, a tireless generator of novel physics ideas which he generously shared with his colleagues. Born in Brno (now Czech Republic) into a wealthy Jewish family, he lost all his relatives to Holocaust, casting a tragic shadow on his life. This book is a unique compilation of large number of previously unknown and unpublished documents from private and university archives, police reports, etc. Placzek's correspondence with the leadership of the Hebrew University in 1934, the 1937 NKVD interrogation files of Konrad Weisselberg, as well as the Zurich Police report of 1955 detailing the circumstances of Placzek's death in a Zurich hotel are illuminating as they shed light on poorly known pages of his life"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.