Farm Hall—Another Look

Abstract

When the American Physical Society (APS) awarded me the 2020 Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics, I was asked to submit a topic for my laureate lecture. After some thoughts I proposed that the APS's Forum for History and Philosophy of Physics should deviate from tradition and have not only the laureate, but also other colleagues speak in a themed session at the 2020 APS Spring Meeting. My proposal was accepted along with my proposed theme, “Farm Hall.”

The internment of ten German atomic physicists at the English manor estate Farm Hall near Cambridge during the second half of 1945 and the transcripts of some of their conversations, which were secretly recorded and selectively transcribed by the British secret service, represent a unique and fascinating source in the history of modern physics. During the past three decades, these transcripts have repeatedly—and almost cyclically—become the focus of intense discussions. It was therefore only natural to use the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the internment for a corresponding session, especially since Farm Hall is also of outstanding importance for my own work in the history of physics.

I was one of the first researchers—perhaps the first German historian (of science)—to examine the transcripts and related documents stored at the US National Archives after their release in spring 1992. This was entirely not so much a merit as sheer researcher's luck, because that spring I happened to make my first ever visit to what for me (as an East German) was literally the “New World.” As a fellow of the Humboldt Foundation, I was a guest of Gerald Holton at Harvard. My journey also took me to Washington, D.C., and, not entirely coincidentally, to the National Archives. After my return to Berlin, and not least through the encouragement of my friend and colleague Mark Walker, the idea of a German edition of the Farm Hall transcripts arose. It was by no means an easy task to find a German publisher, but eventually the German edition was published practically simultaneously with the English edition in the summer of 1993.¹

For the APS session, American scholars were invited who are not only experts on the subject of Farm Hall, but who also belong to my closer American circle of colleagues and to whom I owe many a helpful suggestion and reference on the subject. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic prevented the scheduled session from taking place as planned at the 2020 APS Spring Meeting; it was instead held as an online event on 15 March 2021.

What follows are revised versions of the papers given by Ryan Dahn (American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD) and Mark Walker (Union College, Schenectady, NY) as well as essays by David Cassidy (Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY) and Gerald Holton (Harvard University Cambridge, MA). A newcomer to the “club of veteran Farm Hall historians,” Dahn takes a fresh look at the transcripts and discusses why they are not the smoking gun they appear to be when it comes to determining whether German physicists intended to develop a nuclear bomb. Walker reappraises Heisenberg's apparent confusion at Farm Hall by contextualizing Heisenberg's knowledge about the working of atomic bombs and by comparing it to the contemporary state of affairs in the US; his contribution can also be read as an implicit response to Manfred Popp's recent polemic.² Cassidy discusses turning Farm Hall into a drama and provides a personal account of the challenges of writing a historical play as a professional historian. Finally, Holton—one of the last living eyewitnesses—gives a brief account of the long and difficult road to the release of the Farm Hall transcripts. Unfortunately, the adverse circumstances of the past few months have prevented the timely completion of my own manuscript. The paper is analyzing Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker's role in Farm Hall and the importance of Farm Hall for his further intellectual development in postwar Germany. The paper will be published in one of the next issues of this journal.

 

Dieter Hoffmann, 10 May 2022