Antes de Hiroshima : De Marie Curie a la bomba atómica

If knowledge is always power, in the field of physics this statement is even more true. The chasm separating the exciting adventure of knowledge undertaken by pioneers like Marie Curie, driven by the desire to unravel the secrets of matter to improve human life, from the destructive use to which their discoveries were ultimately put, is dizzying. Diana Preston weaves together biography, history, physics, and politics to trace the path that, in just fifty years, between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, led from one extreme to the other: from compulsive curiosity and the desire to know, to the instrumentalization of knowledge as a weapon of destruction. She does so by highlighting the key figures in the history of the atomic bomb: scientists like the Curies, Bohr, Oppenheimer, and Einstein, and politicians like Roosevelt, Churchill, Truman, Hirohito, and Hitler, without forgetting the victims and anonymous figures who have not gone down in history. With exhaustive documentation and special attention to human detail – ambition, suffering, fear, problems of conscience – the author describes the scientific advances, political decisions and moral dilemmas of men who, for the first time in history, held the destiny of humanity in their hands.