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Re: [Phys-l] A-Bomb



On Jul 9, 2006, at 12:47 AM, Jack Uretsky wrote:

Hi Jim-
I am confident that you will be taken by surprise by the answer.

Fermi got a patent related to the A-Bomb. I was never sufficiently
curious to look up the patent - I have no reason to think it is not in the
public domain - so I don't know the details. Fermi "prosecuted" the
patent, meaning he wrote the application and dealt with the patent office,
himself. I know these things because I was once in the Chicago law firm
of Fitche, Even, Tabin and Welch. Julius Tabin had been a physicist,
working with Fermi on the Manhattan project. After the war he became a
physics prof at MIT, and while at MIT he attended Harvard Law School. He
then left physics for the full time practice of law. His son graduated
from Harvard Med School and then went on one of the successful Mt. Everest
expeditions.

I have a vague memory that Fermi collected some royalties from the US
government on his patent. There may have been a lawsuit (check google).
Tabin radiated wealth when I was working for him. I suspect that much of
his financial success is owed to contacts he made while working on the
Manhattan project.

And I remember reading somewhere that L. Szilard took a patent on the neutron chain reaction. This was long before the fission of uranium was discovered. Google just confirmed this.

http://hypertextbook.com/physics/modern/fission/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leó_Szilárd


Ludwik Kowalski
Let the perfect not be the enemy of the good.