Tim Koeth peered into the crumpled brown paper lunch bag; inside was a surprisingly heavy black metal cube.

He recognized the mysterious object instantly—he had one just like it sitting on his desk at home. It was uranium metal, taken from the nuclear reactor that Nazi scientists had tried—and failed—to build at the end of World War II. This unexpected gift, wrapped in a piece of paper inscribed with a few cryptic but crucial lines, would launch Koeth, a nuclear physicist and professor, and his colleague Miriam Hiebert, a cultural heritage scientist, on an odyssey to trace the tale of these cubes—two of the original 664 on which the Third Reich had pinned their nuclear ambitions.

Part treasure hunt, part historical narrative, The Uranium Club winds its way through the back doors of World War II and Manhattan Project histories to recount the contributions of the men and women at the forefront of the race for nuclear power. From Werner Heisenberg and Germany’s nuclear program to the Curies, the first family of nuclear physics, to the Allied Alsos Mission’s infiltration of Germany to capture Nazi science to the renegade geologists of Murray Hill scouring the globe for uranium, the cubes are lodestars that illuminate a little-known—and hugely consequential—chapter of history.

The cubes are physical testimony to the stories of the German failure, and the successful American program that launched the world into the modern nuclear age, and the lessons for modern science that the contrast in these two programs has to offer.
 

Miriam E. Hiebert, PhD, was first introduced to cultural heritage science at the University of Richmond. While completing her BS in chemistry, she participated in the conservation of an Egyptian mummy, Ti Ameny Net. During her graduate work in materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland, she met Tim Koeth and became interested in nuclear history. Hiebert currently works as a researcher at the Smithsonian on a multiyear survey of glass collections. She lives in Laurel, Maryland. Tim Koeth, PhD, completed his BS and PhD in Physics at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. In 2019 Koeth joined the faculty in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering as an assistant professor. Koeth lives in Brandywine, Maryland.

1. A Cube Appears
2. Introducing Element 92
3. A Brief History of Fission
Part I: Taken from Germany
4. The Lawyer: John Lansdale Jr.
5. The Solider: Boris Pash
6. Alsos in Italy
7. The Scientist: Dr. Samuel Goudsmit
8. Alsos in England
9. The Hunt for Frédéric Joliot-Curie
10. Paris
11. Belgium
12. Unoccupied France
13. Strasbourg
14. Heidelberg
15. Diebner’s Lab
16. Operation Big
Part II: The Reactor Hitler Tried to Build
17. Modern Physics
18. Jewish Physics
19. The Uranium Club
20. How to Build a Nuclear Reactor
21. Early German Experiments
22. Copenhagen
23. 1942
24. War in the Service of Science
25. Building B-VIII
26. Farm Hall
27. The 400
28. Paperweights
Part III: Gift of Ninninger
29. Finding Ninninger
30. The Race
31. Belgian Uranium
32. The CDT
33. Murray Hill
34. Making Metal
35. The Last Stop
36. The New Uranium Club
Epilogue
Index