Knowledge for Peace

At the White House, last week, a group of foreign students assembled to hear a little speech by the President. "We want you," said the President, "to study in the friendliest of atmospheres and go back to your country with the certainty that what you are carrying back is not only a new understanding in nuclear science and reactor engineering, but a new understanding of the friendship that all America feels toward each of your countries."

Dwight Eisenhower had good reason to take such an interest in the visitors. Their appearance in the U.S. is the most important result so far of the famed "atoms for peace" program that he announced to the U.N. General Assembly in 1953.

This week the 31 students from 19 foreign countries will start a special seven-month course at the New School of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont, Ill. For the first four months they will take courses in metallurgy, reactor physics, reactor engineering, chemistry and chemical engineering. They will also learn about the administrative problems involved in atomic research and about radiation safety. After that, they will split up into seminars. Next October another group will arrive, and in March 1956 still another.

To get into the U.S., each student must satisfy two basic requirements: he must have at least a bachelor's degree in science or engineering, and he must speak English. But simple as those requirements sound, each man is carefully selected by his own government and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to carry out the task of opening up a whole new era to his country. "Most of these students," says the school's director, Norman Hilberry, "are from countries just getting into this sort of work. What we are trying to do is to give them a feeling for and the knowledge necessary to make a successful start in making peaceful use of atomic energy."

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