CERN Accelerating science

The Battle for Heavy Water Three physicists' heroic exploits

Up until the end of the 1970s you could still catch a glimpse of his massive silhouette in the corridors of CERN. Lew Kowarksi, one of the pioneers of the Laboratory, was not only a great physicist; he was also a genuine hero of World War II.
In 1940, along with Frédéric Joliot and Hans von Halban, Lew Kowarski managed to get the entire world supply of heavy water away to safety from the Nazis after a fantastic escape from occupied France. At the end of the war, the three physicists played themselves in a film about their adventures entitled 'la Bataille de l'eau lourde'. This film, which has been loaned to us by the French National Film Library, will be shown at CERN for the first time next Thursday.
At the beginning of the war, heavy water (D20, two atoms of deuterium and one oxygen atom) was of strategic importance. In 1939 Frédéric Joliot, aided by Hans von Halban and Lew Kowarski, demonstrated the nuclear chain reaction and the moderator role that heavy water plays in it. A few weeks before the invasion of France, Raoul Dautry, who was then Minister of Armaments and would later become a pioneer of CERN, asked Frédéric Joliot to acquire the world supply of heavy water (185 kilos) which was in Norway. With German troops advancing, Frédéric Joliot and his two colleagues managed to get the precious containers over to England, where von Halban and Kowarski continued their work. Their action put a brake on the Nazis' nuclear research.
The film recounts this small slice of history where scientific research played a role in the destinies of nations.
The screening of the film will be preceded by a short address by Maurice Jacob.