Tracking Nazi Germany’s Failed Atomic Bid

IPST Adjunct Faculty Specialist Miriam Hiebert, with Timothy Koeth (IPST and Materials Science) co-authored the book “The Uranium Club: Unearthing the Lost Relics of the Nazi Nuclear Program” published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated, July 2023.

….“The Uranium Club reads like a detective story with outsized characters and a compelling plot. The book unravels the mystery of how a five-inch uranium cube used by Nazi scientists in World War II ended up in a physics lab at the University of Maryland…..” Cynthia C. Kelly, president, Atomic Heritage Foundation

Part treasure hunt, part historical narrative, The Uranium Club winds its way through the back doors of World War II and Manhattan Project histories to recount the contributions of the men and women at the forefront of the race for nuclear power. From Werner Heisenberg and Germany’s nuclear program to the Curies, the first family of nuclear physics, to the Allied Alsos Mission’s infiltration of Germany to capture Nazi science to the renegade geologists of Murray Hill scouring the globe for uranium, the cubes are lodestars that illuminate a little-known—and hugely consequential—chapter of history.

Hiebert was interviewed by Maryland Today, July 5 edition.