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UI physicist on symposium panel in Chicago for "Copenhagen" premiere
Kesha
Green, News Bureau
(217) 333-1085; k-green3@illinois.edu
2/8/2002
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — An
emeritus professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
who worked on the Manhattan Project will be a panelist at a free symposium
for the premiere of the play "Copenhagen" in Chicago.
As a young man, Albert Wattenberg worked under Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Enrico Fermi, who oversaw the first controlled energy release from the
nucleus of the atom at the University of Chicago as part of the Manhattan
Project during World War II.
"Copenhagen" revisits the ethical implications surrounding
the project, which, in 1942, resulted in the first self-sustaining controlled
nuclear reaction.
Michael Frayn's Tony Award-winning play is based on a secret meeting
between nuclear scientists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in Nazi-occupied
Copenhagen.
The Copenhagen Symposium is on Feb. 16 from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Oriental
Institute Museum, 1155 E. 58th St., on the University of Chicago campus.
Wattenberg will provide background information on the American initiative
to develop nuclear weapons. Three faculty members from the University
of Chicago and one of the actors in the play also will be on the panel.
To make a free reservation to attend the symposium, call (773) 753-4472.
More information about performances of "Copenhagen" is available
at http://courttheater.uchicago.edu/features/copenhagen.html.
