If you’ve seen the film Oppenheimer then you must see the play Delicate Particle Logic by Jennifer Blackmer about the life and times of physicist Lise Meitner.
This play explores the relationship between science and art through the story of the discovery of nuclear fission. Under the harshly male-dominated science elite of the time, Lise Meitner broke through to become the leader of a major scientific institute, and the first woman to have the title of `Professor' in all of Germany. Along with her long-time research colleague, chemist Otto Hahn, she began a series of experiments that led to the discovery of nuclear fission. The play also presents a meeting between Dr. Meitner and Hahn’s wife, Edith, a painter. The complicated swirl of their intertwined lives, two women and one man, mixes with the violent upheavals in the world, as the Nazis take over Germany and everything changes. Edith Hahn and Lise Meitner discuss the Bomb, the Nazis and Otto Hahn’s Nobel Prize as an imagined friendship blossoms between the physicist and the artist.
After the performance there will be a talk-back with the director and cast.
The playwright, Jennifer Blackmer, is a faculty member in theatre at Ball State University. The staged reading is performed by the Frank Theatre Company of Minneapolis. The play is produced by Brian Schwartz, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.