scientific-internationalism

Budur, coping with the death of her aunt Idelba who suffered from war fatigue, takes on the mission to promote peace through scientific diplomacy by spreading atomic knowledge among physicists worldwide. She forms a collaborative relationship with Piali, shifting her focus from history to archaeology and confronting the challenges posed by the militarization of physics research amid global political instability, including China's descent into civil war. Together, they prepare to attend an international scientific conference in Isfahan, symbolizing a hopeful cultural revival and international scientific cooperation despite ongoing geopolitical tensions.

This chapter details the post-World War I period (1918-1923) in atomic physics, focusing on Ernest Rutherford's groundbreaking experiments that achieved artificial disintegration of the atom, marking the first successful transmutation of matter. It highlights the tension between scientific discovery and its potential military misuse, the international collaboration and communication among physicists despite wartime hostilities, and the profound paradigm shifts in physics brought about by Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Rutherford that challenged classical conceptions of nature, matter, space, and time.