From Atmospheric to Stellar Fire
Michael Wiescher
Freimann Professor of Physics
University of Notre Dame
Would a nuclear explosion ignite the atmosphere? This question was raised again in the film Oppenheimer. It goes back to the concern of Edward Teller, who was one of the young generation of Jewish physicists, who had left Germany for the US in the 1930s to explore the fundamentals of quantum and nuclear physics. Their experience and methodology were essential to the Manhattan Project, facilitating the rapid development of the atomic bomb. The experience and knowledge gained from the Manhattan Project flowed back to nuclear physics after the war and defined major new research directions. This talk will seek to describe the close intellectual environment from which these questions and research directions have emerged and blossomed for decades.