ONE lingering question from the second world war is why the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, days apart. In the best section of this sometimes fascinating, sometimes frustrating book, Amir Aczel uses recently declassified documents to argue that the decision was aimed at delivering a warning to the Soviet Union.
Aczel’s history of uranium from the 1500s to the present shines when dealing with scientists and their socio-political environments. Nuclear pioneer Enrico Fermi, we learn, was a practical joker. Lise Meitner developed the theory of nuclear fission during a Christmas-morning outing on which she had boasted, at age 60, that she could hike as…
