Wilhelm Groth

Wilhelm Groth (9 January 1904 in Hamburg – 20 February 1977

in Bonn) was a German physical chemist. During World War II, he
worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the
Uranium Club; his main activity was the development of
centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium. After the war, he was a
professor of physical chemistry at the University of Hamburg. In
1950, he became director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry at
the University of Bonn. He was a principal in the 1956 shipment
of three centrifuges for uranium enrichment to Brazil.

Education
From 1922 to 1927, Groth studied at the Technische Hochschule
München (today, the Technical University of Munich (Technische
Universität München), the Ludwig Maximilian University of
Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), and the
University of Tübingen (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen). Wilhelm Groth, in a trip to Brazil.
He received his doctorate in 1927 under Walther Gerlach at
Tübingen. His thesis was on the determination of
electromechanical equivalents.[1][2]

Career
In 1927, Groth became a teaching assistant at the Technische Hochschule Hannover, today Leibniz
University Hannover.[1]

In 1932, Groth became an assistant to Otto Stern and Paul Harteck at the Institut für Physikalische
Chemie (Institute for Physical Chemistry) at the University of Hamburg. He completed his Habilitation at
Hamburg at the end of 1938, following complicated negotiations with Hamburg district leadership of the
Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (NSDDB, National Socialist German University
Lecturers League ).[1][3]

Shortly after the discovery of nuclear fission in December 1938/January 1939, the Uranverein, i.e., the
German nuclear energy project, had an initial start in April before being formed a second time under the
Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) in September.

Paul Harteck was director of the physical chemistry department at the University of Hamburg and an
advisor to the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office). On 24 April 1939, along with his
teaching assistant Wilhelm Groth, Harteck made contact with the Reichskriegsministerium (RKM, Reich
Ministry of War) to alert them to the potential of military applications of nuclear chain reactions and point
out its political significance. Two days earlier, on 22 April 1939, after hearing a colloquium paper by
Wilhelm Hanle on the use of uranium fission in a Uranmaschine (uranium machine, i.e., nuclear reactor),
Georg Joos, along with Hanle, notified Wilhelm Dames, at the Reichserziehungsministerium (REM,
Reich Ministry of Education), of potential military applications of nuclear energy. The communication
was given to Abraham Esau, head of the physics section of the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich
Research Council) at the REM. On 29 April, a group, organized by Esau, met at the REM to discuss the
potential of a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The group included the physicists Walther Bothe, Robert
Döpel, Hans Geiger, Wolfgang Gentner (probably sent by Walther Bothe), Wilhelm Hanle, Gerhard
Hoffmann, and Georg Joos; Peter Debye was invited, but he did not attend. After this, informal work
began at the Georg-August University of Göttingen by Joos, Hanle, and their colleague Reinhold
Mannfopff; the group of physicists was known informally as the first Uranverein (Uranium Club) and
formally as Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kernphysik. The group's work was discontinued in August 1939,
when the three were called to military training.[4][5][6][7][8]

The second Uranverein began after the Heereswaffenamt squeezed out the Reichsforschungsrat of the
Reichserziehungsministerium and started the formal German nuclear energy project under military
auspices. The second Uranverein was formed on 1 September 1939, the day World War II began, and it
had its first meeting on 16 September 1939. The meeting was organized by Kurt Diebner, advisor to the
HWA, and held in Berlin. The invitees included Walther Bothe, Siegfried Flügge, Hans Geiger, Otto
Hahn, Paul Harteck, Gerhard Hoffmann, Josef Mattauch, and Georg Stetter. A second meeting was held
soon thereafter and included Klaus Clusius, Robert Döpel, Werner Heisenberg, and Carl Friedrich von
Weizsäcker. Also at this time, the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Physics, after World War II the Max Planck Institute for Physics), in Berlin-Dahlem, was placed under
HWA authority, with Diebner as the administrative director, and the military control of the nuclear
research commenced.[6][7][9]

As a principal in the Uranverein, Harteck brought many of his colleagues at Hamburg into the project's
activities; this included Groth. At the end of 1939, Groth tested simultaneously with Rudolf Fleischmann
the Clusius-Dickel isotope separation process on uranium hexafluoride, with negative results. In the
autumn of 1941, Groth, Harteck, and Albert Suhr began the construction of an ultracentrifuge for the
enrichment of uranium-235. The construction was done under the auspices of an Heereswaffenamt
contract let by Kurt Diebner. The Anschütz & Co. G.m.b.H., a gyroscope firm in Kiel, was a participant in
the project; at Anschütz, Konrad Beyerle was in charge of centrifuge research and development. In 1943,
enrichment to 5% was achieved, however, technical difficulties hindered large-scale production. The
Anschütz corporation told Groth that for mass production they would require many more mechanics and
engineers.[1][10][11] In 1945 Groth was captured by T-Force, a British Army unit established to locate
German scientists. The officer who captured Groth was Brian Urquhart.[12]

After 1945, Groth was appointed nichtplanmäßiger Professor (supernumerary professor) of physical
chemistry at Hamburg University, with permission of the British occupation government; from 1948, he
was an ausserordentlicher Professor (extraordinarius professor) there. From 1950, occupying the new
created Lehrstuhl für physikalische Chemie (chair of physical chemistry), he was head of the Department
of Physical Chemistry and an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) at Rheinische Friedrich-
Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. He was a motivating force behind the building and the design of the Institut
für Physikalische Chemie (Institute for Physical Chemistry), and when it was completed at the end of
1954 he became its director. He was Rektor (Rector) of the University from 1956 to 1966.[1][13]
Founded in 1956, Groth was one of the founding fathers of the Kernforschungsanlage Jülich (today, the
Jülich Research Centre (Forschungszentrum Jülich), and he was the second chairman (Vorsitzender) of its
Scientific Council. Between 1961 and 1969, he established the Institut für Physikalische Chemie
(Institute for Physical Chemistry) there.[14]

In 1953, Admiral Alvaro Alberto, the first president of Brazil's National Research Council, met with
Wilhelm Groth, Otto Hahn, and Paul Harteck, at the Institute of Physics in Hamburg. An agreement was
made to ship three centrifuges for uranium enrichment, along with supporting equipment, to Brazil. The
shipment was to include components from 14 German companies. Initially, the shipment was thwarted by
orders of James Conant, U.S. High Commissioner to Germany. The shipment, however, was finally made
in 1956, under the auspices of the University of São Paulo in Brazil.[15][16][17]

Honors
1970 – Großes Verdienstkreuz (Great Cross of Merit) of the Verdienstorden der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany)[14]

Internal reports
The following reports were published in Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte (Research Reports in
Nuclear Physics), an internal publication of the German Uranverein. The reports were classified Top
Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports
were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos and sent to the United States Atomic Energy
Commission for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports
are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics.[18][19]

Wilhelm Groth Stand der Arbeiten zur Trennung der Isotope 235U und 238U G-33 (5 June
1940 (http://www.deutsches-museum.de/archiv/archiv-online/geheimdokumente/forschungs
zentren/hamburg/groth-harteck-trennung-der-isotope-u235-und-u238/))
Wilhelm Groth Stand der Arbeiten zur Herstellung einer Ultrazentrifuge G-82 (14 December
1941)
Wilhelm Groth Stand der Arbeiten zur Trennung der Isotope des Präparats 38 G-83
(December 1941 (http://www.deutsches-museum.de/archiv/archiv-online/geheimdokumente/
forschungszentren/hamburg/isotopentrennung-praeparat-38/))[20]
Wilhelm Groth Trennung der Uranisotope nach dem Ultrazentrifugenverfahren. I.
Anreichereung der Xenonisotope in einer einstufigen Ultrazentrifuge G-146 (27 June 1942)
Wilhelm Groth Die Trennung der Uranisotope nach dem Trennohr- und dem
Ultrazentrifugenverfahren G-147 (23 March 1942)
 Wilhelm Groth and Albert Suhr Trennung der Uranisotope nach dem
Ultrazentrifugenverfahren G-149 (17 August 1942)

Books by Groth
Konrad Beyerle, Wilhelm Groth, Paul Harteck, and Johannes Jensen Über Gaszentrifugen:
Anreicherung der Xenon-, Krypton- und der Selen-Isotope nach dem Zentrifugenverfahren
(Chemie, 1950); cited in Walker, 1993, 278.

Bibliography
Hentschel, Klaus (Editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (Editorial Assistant and Translator) Physics
and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser, 1996)
Macrakis, Kristie Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany (Oxford,
1993)
Walker, Mark German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949
(Cambridge, 1993) ISBN 0-521-43804-7
Warneck, Peter and Hanns von Weyssenhoff Zum 100. Geburtstag von Wilhelm Groth,
Bunsen-Magazin (http://www.bunsen.de/) Volume 6, Number 2, 36-37 (2004)

Notes
1. Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Groth.
2. The title of Wilhelm Groth’s thesis for his doctorate is: Eine neue Methode zur Bestimmung
des elektromechanischen Äquivalents, as cited in Warneck and von Weyssenhoff, 2004, 36.
3. Walker, 1993, 196.
4. Horst Kant Werner Heisenberg and the German Uranium Project / Otto Hahn and the
Declarations of Mainau and Göttingen, Preprint 203 (Max-Planck Institut für
Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2002 (http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P203.PDF))
footnote #8 on p. 3.
5. Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, 363-364 and Appendix F; see the entries for Esau, Harteck
and Joos. See also the entry for the KWIP in Appendix A and the entry for the HWA in
Appendix B.
6. Macrakis, 1993, 164-169.
7. Jagdish Mehra and Helmut Rechenberg The Historical Development of Quantum Theory.
Volume 6. The Completion of Quantum Mechanics 1926-1941. Part 2. The Conceptual
Completion and Extension of Quantum Mechanics 1932-1941. Epilogue: Aspects of the
Further Development of Quantum Theory 1942-1999. (Springer, 2001), pp. 1011-1011.
8. Walker, 1993, 17-18.
9. Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, 363-364 and Appendix F; see the entries for Diebner and
Döpel. See also the entry for the KWIP in Appendix A and the entry for the HWA in Appendix
B.
10. Wilhelm Groth Stand der Arbeiten zur Herstellung einer Ultrazentrifuge G-82 (14 December
1941)
11. Walker, 1993, 33, 82, 148.
12. T Force, The Race for Nazi War Secrets, 1945 by Sean Longden. Published by Constable &
Robinson, September 2009
13. Warneck and von Weyssenhoff, 2004, 36-37.
14. Warneck and von Weyssenhoff, 2004, 37.
15. Norman Gall Atoms for Brazil, dangers for all (http://www.normangall.com/brazil_art18eng.ht
m). Published jointly by Foreign Policy (23) and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (June
1976).
16. Jean Krasno Non-proliferation: Brazil's secret nuclear program, ORBIS, Summer, 1994 (htt
p://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0365/is_n3_v38/ai_15595401/pg_3).
17. WMD Insights (http://www.wmdinsights.com/I7/I7_LA1_BraziliznNuclear.htm) – July/August
2006: Brazilian Nuclear Debate Highlights Parallels and Contrasts with Iran.
18. Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, Appendix E; see the entry for Kernphysikalische
Forschungsberichte.
19. Walker, 1993, 268-274.
20. Präparat 38, 38-Oxyd, and 38 were the cover names for uranium oxide; see Deutsches
Museum (http://www.deutsches-museum.de/archiv/archiv-online/geheimdokumente/forschu
ngszentren/leipzig/schichtenanordnung-h2o/).

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