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On the day in 1945 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima it was to the Prince de Broglie that the French newspaper reporters went to say, “What in the world is this? What are they doing? What's uranium got to do with it?” The Prince de Broglie, who didn't know that this project was going on in America, was still able to explain to them what atomic and nuclear reactions are and what it was all about. He's the top physicist of France, but he's also the head of the de Broglie family, which is a family of great wealth, and a director of the Banque de France.
He came to Sunday luncheon with the people I was visiting out near Chateau-Thierry, called Chateau-Montmirail. It's a seventeenth century chateau designed by the same man who designed Versailles, Lenotre. It's owned by the present Duc de La Rochefoucauld. The Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld is a friend of mine of many years standing. They're a very intelligent and intellectual people. I don't know that I regard them as wild radicals, but they're forward-looking. They try to do the right thing.
At any rate, I was spending the weekend with them. They had a very interesting group over for lunch, including the Prince de Broglie. At any rate, I had a
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