Discussion will be the first installment of the ATM’s lecture series

The Atomic Testing Museum, the UNLV Department of History and the Black Mountain Institute are collaborating to bring three prominent authors to UNLV to speak about their work on the nuclear age.

Martin Sherwin, Ruth Lewin Sime and Mary Palevsky will be the guest speakers for Tuesday’s roundtable panel discussion titled “From Splitting the Atom to the Cuban Missile Crisis: Writing the 1st Quarter Century of the Nuclear Age.”

The event is the first installment of the 2010 Distinguished Lecture Series, said Dawn Barlow, director of communications and development at the Atomic Testing Museum.

“Each author is an authority on the subject of the history of the development of nuclear physics,” Barlow said.

Joseph Andy Fry, a distinguished professor in the department of history at UNLV, will moderate the discussion. Fry will ask the authors questions on their respective areas of expertise.

Professor and chair of the history department at UNLV David Wrobel said the event should appeal to everyone interested in what he described as one of the most profound elements of the 20th century and the contemporary world: nuclear weapons technology.

“How many students are aware that for decades the U.S. developed and exploded atomic bombs in this very region? Tourists would gather at Lee Canyon to witness the explosions,” Wrobel said. “Southern Nevada is not just the epicenter of the world tourism industry; it has a complicated legacy as the epicenter of weapons testing during the Cold War.”

Historians, test site retirees, political scientists, writers and the community could all benefit from attending this discussion, Palevsky said.

“All of the panelists are truly experts in this area of the history of nuclear science and its international implications,” Fry said. “So it promises to be an excellent evening.”

Sime, professor emeritus in the department of chemistry at Sacramento City College, will be discussing her work and her biography of Lise Meitner, the physicist who co-discovered nuclear fission in Berlin in December of 1938, along with the works of Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann.

Titled “Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics,” her book chronicles the life of a woman who overcame great obstacles to become a prominent scientist in Germany, Sime said.

“It sounds terrific. [It] should be an exciting and stimulating event,” said Sime, who was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her current project.

Palevsky, a visiting scholar in UNLV’s department of history, is the former director of the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project at UNLV. She was the 2008-09 Black Mountain Institute-Kluge Fellow in Partnership with the Library of Congress.

She is also the author of “Atomic Fragments: A Daughter’s Questions,” which looks at the question of morality related to the atomic bomb.

Palevsky said the discussion will be about literature and writing on the issue of science and technology. Speaking about the research she has conducted, Palevsky will discuss the current issue of nuclear weapons in Pakistan and Iran.

“It is very enriching for me,” Palevsky said. “I can discuss my research in a larger context.”

Sherwin, a professor of history at George Mason University,  is the author of “A World Destroyed; Hiroshima and its Legacies.”

He also won the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 2006, which he shares with Kai Bird for their work on “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.”

Sherwin is a Woodrow Wilson Center fellow. His project at the Center is “Gambling with Armageddon: The Military, the Hawks and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1945-1962.”

“This event is evidence of a wonderfully promising collaboration that is developing between the university and the Atomic Testing Museum that will enable us to better understand the history and legacies of the nuclear age,” Wrobel said.

The event will be held tomorrow at the Atomic Testing Museum, beginning with a wine and cheese reception at 6 p.m. The panel discussion will start at 6:30 p.m. It is free for members and $5 for non-members.