Seite - 250 - in Kerne, Kooperation und Konkurrenz - Kernforschung in Österreich im internationalen Kontext (1900–1950)

Kernforschung im Kontext des »Dritten Reiches«, 1938–1945250 dards ohnehin nicht informiert waren, wurde das Thema dort nicht behandelt.69 Wie Paneth in einem Brief an Meyer lebhaft beschrieb, kochte stattdessen der ungelöste Streit um die radioaktive Nomenklatur erneut hoch : »The whole question of radioactive standards and terminology is in a terrible mess, perhaps even worse than you seem to have realized. It is largely due […] to the unreasonable behaviour of the Joliot-Curies. […] Do you know that ›becquerel‹ is not the first, but the third name Irene Curie has suggested for the new unit, instead of ›rutherford‹ ? Shortly after the question was first raised by the Americans in 1946 there was a physicists meeting in Cambridge which the Joliot-Curies attended […]. It started : ›La radioactivité est une science française‹ […]. Because the natural radioactivity was French owing to the old Curies and the artificial radio- activity equally French owing to the Joliot-Curies, she thought it only proper to call the new unit […] a Joliot. It was, however, pointed out to her that units are never named after living persons, and when we had in July 1947 a meeting in London she and her husband proposed for the new unit the name ›neo-curie‹. […] It seems that for the Paris radiologists the question of name […] has become the main issue and that the real problems which you mention in your letter, and others which the American scientists are dealing with in their attempts to produce reliable standards for isotope measurements, do not interest them. […] I rather think I shall leave it to the Americans to settle their quarrel with Paris alone. […] I quite agree that for the comparison of radium standards the counting of particles is only a ›Papierdefinition‹, but surely it is not so for the standardization of radioactive isotopes (iodine, sodium, phos- phorus) where counting is the operation on which all comparison is based. I think very good work is done in this respect by our American colleagues and their intercomparison of stan- dards, in which about 50 laboratories participate, will be of great value.«70 Nach hitziger Diskussion einigten sich die Konferenzteilnehmer schließlich darauf, eine vorläufige Kommission unter dem Dach der International Union of Physics and Chemistry zu bilden, um die Frage der radioaktiven Einheiten und Namensgebung zu klären. Diese Kommission, deren Vorsitz Frédéric Joliot übernahm, hatte elf Mitglie- der. Sie spiegelte die veränderten Machtverhältnisse in der internationalen Physiker- schaft nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg getreu wider. Anders als vor dem Krieg stammte die Hälfte der Mitglieder nun aus Großbritannien und den USA, während den Deut- schen eine Teilnahme vorläufig untersagt war.71 Im Herbst 1949 wurde die Interims- Kommission mit der alten Internationalen Radiumstandard-Kommission vereinigt. Sie 69 Vgl. AÖAW, FE-Akten, IR, NL Meyer, K 17, Fiche 277 : Paneth an Meyer vom 30.1.1948. 70 AÖAW, FE-Akten, IR, NL Meyer, K 17, Fiche 277 : Paneth an Meyer vom 28.7.1949. 71 Vgl. AÖAW, FE-Akten, IR, NL Meyer, K 12, Fiche 200 : Hahn an Joliot vom 9.10.1948.