Data from France

French science is very much alive. Under the Nazis, most laboratories and their staffs were left intact, even managed to aid the resistance movement. The early Nazi policy was conciliatory, gradually gave way to suspicion and repression. At the end the Parisian laboratories organized a milice patriotiqne of their own. Now most scientists await only the resumption of gas and electric services--and contact with foreign savants.

Last week a reception at the Sorbonne welcomed the return from Switzerland of famed, 72-year-old Paul Langevin, long the leader of Parisian physicists. His arrest in October 1940 while at his post in L'Ecole de Physique was the first break in the Nazi wooing of French scientists. He was imprisoned for two months, but released after protest riots in which several students were killed. The underground helped him to escape from house arrest at Troyes and cross the border. His son-in-law, Jacques Solomon, was among the organizers (all of whom were shot by the Nazis) of the clandestine scientific journal, L'Universite Libre.

The Nazis found few collaborators among French scientists But one great name, Alexis Carrel, has become anathema to Langevin and other resisters. Throughout the occupation Carrel had plenty of money for research under the big Fondation Franfaise Pour L'Etude Des Probleemes Humains, created for him by Vichy. Last week Carrel declared that his foundation had concerned itself exclusively with scientific studies inspired by his Man the Unknown. But top-rank scientists charged that the foundation had a distinctly pro-Nazi tinge, that its subsidized sociological studies had served as a front for researches in "racism." After Paris' liberation, Carrel was suspended as director of the foundation. Last week famed Chemist Federic Joliot, now top man in French science, was reported preparing to place the foundation under new management.

Federic Joliot, who in 1935 shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry with his wife, Irene Curie, had his Nazi troubles. His laboratories at Paris and Ivry were seized and in June, 1941 he had a twelve-hour ordeal with the Gestapo. He came through well enough to get back not only his laboratories but also the only French-owned cyclotron and a precious stock of radium.* Says he: "It wasn't funny. But after I had convinced them that I was all right, I was able to get back to work seriously."

Bottled Goods. The Nazis little knew how serious his work was. Under cover of theoretical researches at the College de France, he led in the organization of 18 laboratories for making explosives and incendiary bottles for resistance units. At least twelve Nazi tanks were destroyed by the bottles. Huge quantities of guncotton were made from cotton received a bale at a time. Radio transmitters and receivers were assembled for the underground despite, in some cases, Nazi occupancy of the same buildings. Joliot continued the publication of L'Universite Libre, which reached a fortnightly circulation of a thousand.

With the liberation Joliot assumed charge of the reorganization of French scientific research. His scientist wife, daughter of Madame Curie, shrugs off the dangerous years. Says she: "They [the Nazis] didn't worry me much. They seemed to mix me up with my sister [famed French WAC officer, Eve Curie] and looked somewhat puzzled when they met me, but I never helped them to work out the family relationship."

* Joliot's Curie Laboratory has the one gram of radium purchased for Madame Curie with the $100,000 subscribed by U.S. women on her visit to the U.S. in 1921.

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