Lew Kowarski - Research During WWII

Research During WWII

He joined Frédéric Joliot-Curie's group in 1934, where Hans von Halban came in 1937. They established in 1939 the possibility of nuclear chain reactions and nuclear energy production. While doing their research, the events of World War II forced them to eventually move to England, bringing with them the world's entire stock of heavy water, given on loan by Norway to France so that it would not fall into German hands. They continued their research at the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge for the MAUD Committee, part of the wartime Tube Alloys project.

Just before the invasions, the records and papers of Frederic Joliot, Hans Halban and Lew Kowarski were smuggled out of France, and eventually to England. Included in this operation were 26 drums of heavy water, the world’s entire stock at the time. Some of the papers written by Halban and Kowarski were deposited at the Royal Society in the UK, where they were sealed with a note from James Chadwick, dated December 18, 1941, that said, “The paper is such that it would be inadvisable to publish it at the present time.” The papers described the outline of a design for a nuclear fission reactor.

Kowarski then worked in the Montreal Laboratory in Canada, but only after Halban had been replaced as Director by John Cockroft, as he did not want to work under Halban. He supervised the construction of Canada's first nuclear reactor (ZEEP) at the Chalk River Laboratories in 1945.