Preston - Before the fallout : from Marie Curie to Hiroshima

First I should acknowledge the collaboration of my husband, Michael, in both the research and the writing of this book. Without him I could not have undertaken it.

I am also indebted to many others: Hans Bethe, Robert Christy, Bertrand Goldschmidt, Philip Morrison, and Sir Joseph Rotblat for talking to me about their personal experiences of working on the Allied bomb program; Lorna Arnold, formerly the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority's official historian, for her generous help and advice; and Arnold Kramish and Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker for corresponding with me and answering my questions.

In the United Kingdom the staff and archivists of many libraries and organizations gave me their help: the BBC Written Archives Centre; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library; the Cambridge University Library; the archives of Churchill College, Cambridge; Liverpool University Physics Department (and Peter Rowlands in particular); the London Library; the U.K. National Radiological Protection Board; the Royal Society; and the U.K. National Archive.

In the United States I must thank the staff of the American Institute of Physics, in particular Julie Gass, for their generosity in sending me transcripts of oral interviews; the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration; the Library of Congress; and the Bancroft Library of the University of California.

Elsewhere I am grateful to the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen, and especially Finn Aaserud, for making the recently released postwar letters from Niels Bohr to Werner Heisenberg so accessible; to Aubrey Pomerance of the Judisches Museum, Berlin, for information about Fritz Strassmann's concealment in his apartment of the Jewish pianist Andrea Wolffenstein; to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for a copy of the citation acknowledging Strassmann's courage; and to the Deutsches Museum in Munich for access to formerly secret documents about the German atom bomb project from 1938 to 1945.

I have made every effort to contact holders of copyright, but with a story covering fifty years this is not an easy task. I hope that anyone I failed to find will accept my sincere apologies.

In Japan, I was touched by the kindness and hospitality of the many people we met there: Miho Nakano for translation and research and for welcoming us to her city; Kazuhiko Takano, deputy director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, for insights into the prewar life and history of the city; Yoko Kono for guiding us around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum; Emiko Ono for sharing with us her family history; Masanori Ishimoto of the Hiroshima City Museum of History and Traditional Crafts for telling us about the city's artisans; Jun Fujita and Toshie Kawase for their childhood reminiscences; and Margaret Irwin of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation's Archive Office, Hiroshima, for information about the early history of radiology in Japan.

I must also thank family and friends: Ulrich Aldag, Rhys Bidder, St. John Brown, Clinton Leeks, Kim Lewison, Graeme Low, Neil Munro, and Oliver Strimpel for their insights on the text; Eric Hollis for the loan of books; my aunt Lily Bardi-Ullmann for newspaper research in the United States; and my mother and parents-in-law for their support.

Lastly the help of our agents, Bill Hamilton and Michael Carlisle, was invaluable, and it has been a pleasure working with Michele Hutchison and the team at Doubleday in London and with George Gibson and his colleagues at Walker & Company in New York.

BEFORE THE

FALLOUT