June 11 ?! ....amazing that there was no mention of it anywhere else (as far as I know -- anybody else see anything ? ....surely there must have been prominent obituaries all over Europe. )
Jaro
NUCLEONICS WEEK - June 20, 2002
BERTRAND GOLDSCHMIDT, PIONEER
OF FRENCH NUCLEAR, DIES AT 89
Bertrand Goldschmidt, the last surviving French participant
in the wartime development of nuclear energy, died in Paris June 11 at age 89.
Goldschmidt directed his country's uranium and plutonium
chemistry programs after the war, and at the end of a
career spent at the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique
(CEA), culminating as director of international relations, was
chairman of the IAEA board of governors in 1980.
A chemist by education, the young Goldschmidt was
engaged before the last war by Marie Curie at her Radium
Institute as a preparer. He rose to become professor, but lost
his position in 1940 under the collaborationist Vichy government
which forbade Jews in teaching professions.
Goldschmidt enrolled in the Free French Forces in New
York and became the only Frenchman to work on the Manhattan
Project. He worked with Glenn Seaborg on plutonium
separation before being assigned, along with two other prominent
French scientists, Hans Halban and Lew Kowarski, to the
Anglo-Canadian nuclear development effort in Montreal.
There, Goldschmidt developed the basic solvent extraction
process that is still the most widely used to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
After the war, Goldschmidt became part of the small team
that led the CEA's development of a nuclear energy and
weapons capability, as director of chemistry. In late 1949, his
unit separated the first micrograms of French plutonium.
His wartime and post-war experiences-including the
abrupt dismissal of the "Canadians" from the Anglo-American
nuclear development work and the blackout of further
information by a U.S. government that regarded French scientists
as dangerously pro-Soviet-made Goldschmidt wary of
what he liked to call "Anglo-Saxon" dictates in the world of
nuclear diplomacy. He wrote two books: "Pioneers of the
Atom" told the story of the wartime effort, while "The Atomic
Complex" recounted nuclear diplomatic relations to the early 1980s.
He was an accomplished story-teller and regaled audiences
worldwide with tales of the founding of Eurodif, Carter-era
standoffs between U.S. and Europe/Japan, the first western
contract to purchase Soviet uranium enrichment services, and
other seminal moments in the history of the nuclear industry.-
Ann MacLachlan, Paris