FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 15, 2005
FY05-49
Summer Science Series Returns Presenting: The German Uranium Club Under the Third Reich
OAK RIDGE, Tenn.—Just how close was Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to producing an atomic bomb?
The German nuclear energy project was an endeavor by scientists to develop nuclear energy and an atomic bomb for practical use. Since that time, the intentions of German physicist Dr. Werner Heisenberg’s research team are a matter of historical controversy.
Dr. Amand Lucas, professor emeritus at the University of Namur in Belgium , will speak at Pollard Technology Conference Center Tuesday night in a free, public lecture, giving an overview of several German nuclear scientists who were members of Adolf Hitler’s German uranium club. The program will begin at 6:30 p.m. and is the opening event in the 2005 Summer Science Series, sponsored by Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU).
Lucas’ presentation will focus on the scientists’ capture at the end of World War II, their detention in England , secretly recorded conversations and recently published letters serving as a postwar apology.
The Summer Science Series will continue with a second lecture at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 28, as ORAU’s Allen Coggins presents: “Terror, Horror and Sorrow: Tennessee ’s Greatest Historic Epidemics.”
All lectures in the Summer Science Series are free of charge and open to the public. All events in the Summer Science Series will be held in the auditorium of Pollard Technology Conference Center (www.pollardcenter.org), which is located at 210 Badger Ave. in Oak Ridge .
The opening lecture of the Summer Science Series, featuring Lucas, is sponsored in part by the Oak Ridge Forum on Religion and Science. Lucas will also present a talk on "Scribbles that Changed the Course of Human Affairs" at noon on Thursday, June 23 in the Undercroft Room of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. The talk is part of a non-denominational series by the forum.
ORAU is a university consortium leveraging the scientific strength of 91 major research institutions to advance science and education by partnering with national laboratories, government agencies and private industry. ORAU manages the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for the U.S. Department of Energy.