Talk:MAUD Committee

Bohr's Role
Maud Ray was not Bohrs old girlfriend. She was a housekeeper at a place he'd lived when he studied in Britain under Rutherford. And he didn't ask for her - he told them to tell her.


 * OK I have amended the article, but with your detailed sources, you might have done a better job.JMcC 09:15, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I've got it down "as his children's former governess", on p15 Pierre, Andrew J "Nuclear Politics : The British Experience With An Independent Strategic Force, 1939-1970" (1972), and he is citing Gowing, Margaret “Britain and Atomic Energy, 1939-1945” (1964) - which is the "offcial" history of the UK bomb project. Pickle 12:38, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

MAUD or Maud
Why is there discrepency between MAUD and Maud. Which is it? And if it's MAUD, what does that stand for? Rukky 19:31, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. I think we should move it to Maud Committee. It was named after someone called Maud, so it is not an abbreviation.  Anyone disagree? JMcC 20:04, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thats the point of the annecdote! - It does and dosen't stand for anything!!! However looking in Margaret Gowing's offcial history of the british nuclear weapons project sereis of book (all 3 are very thick!), its is reffered to as Maud rather than MAUD. (This was in the field of my BA dissertation) Pickle 01:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It actually stands for: Military Application of Uranium Detonation which is why in the original document (shown as the lead image) the word is in block capitals and punctuated by full stops, i.e., M.A.U.D.


 * The Maud Ray Kent anecdote was probably theorised by someone not privy to this correct meaning, as this would have been highly secret at the time, as including the word 'Detonation' it fairly obviously refers to an explosion, i.e., a bomb. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.68.219 (talk) 16:36, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Bohr or Meitner?
This page claims that the "Maud Ray" telegram was from Bohr. Richard Rhodes claims that the telegram was sent by Lise Meitner (though the message was presumably behalf of Bohr). The full sentence is: "MET NIELS AND MARGRETHE RECENTLY BOTH WELL BUT UNHAPPY ABOUT EVENTS PLEASE INFORM COCKCROFT AND MAUD RAY KENT." I'd like to fix the article. Any objections? Asrabkin (talk) 09:01, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I too read about the supposed Meitner telegram in Rhodes. According to him, she sent it (presumably from Sweden) to someone she knew in England, who sent it to Cockroft, who in turn sent it to famous physicist James Chadwick with the attempt to solve the supposed anagram. Hexmaster (talk) 01:16, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

NKVD "obtained"? 1943?
From the very beginning Melitta Norwood, a Communist, was Secretary of the Committee. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/spy-scandal-the-double-life-of-a-quiet-old-lady-1117939.html It seems unlikely that it took until 1943 for the Russians to "obtain" anything. In fact she was keeping them informed in real time. This seems to be normal operating procedure, of course, just like the CIA running the Soviet air defense system in the 1970s. Now then, can somebody bring me up to speed on just what Hitler's "my Jew," Milch, the head of German aviation research, did to produce a useful air force as opposed to a bravura array of technological wonders? David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 00:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 3 August 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Cannot read a consensus for the move after 2+ weeks. (non-admin closure) — Andy W. ( talk  · ctb) 20:02, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

MAUD Committee → Maud Committee – "Maud" is a codename, not an acronym, and we don't usually capitalise codenames. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC) --Relisting. Ḉɱ̍ 2nd anniv.   17:28, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose: It an acronym; see above.  This "Maud" spelling needs to be corrected to "MAUD" throughout the article.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:15, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The above is incorrect. It is not an acronym. However, it was always written "M.A.U.D." and not "Maud". See Gowing, p. 45. Hawkeye7 (talk) 09:15, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Neutral for now. The only source I have access to uses all-caps. How do the other sources handle it? Whatever style is chosen, there should be a section about how and if the name is capitalized, based on sources. Thank you. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 02:11, 18 August 2016 (UTC)


 * MAUD(Military Application of Uranium Detonation): Wikipedia should be renewed after the controlled information had been freed. The claim about British "Maud", is based on the source written by an official historian of the History of the Second World War: United Kingdom Civil Series and published in the USA in the Cold War era. However my editing about British "MAUD", is based on the source edited by a Senior Research Analyst at the World Nuclear Association and published in the UK in 2016. The source says "in the second British MAUD(Military Application of Uranium Detonation) report in July 1941" .ナルドの香油 (talk) 05:00, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
 * That source has no footnotes. We need a better source than that to override the official historian. Currently the consensus among historians is summed up here. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:41, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

As a result of the frisch-Peierls Memorandum a subcommittee of the committee for the scientific survey of Air Warfare was set up. The sub-committee, whose brief was to look into the possibility of a Uranium bomb, was given an uninformative title-MAUD Committee. The name, deliberately intended to obscure its activities, was based on a misreading of a telegram from Niels Bohr to Otto Frisch. Bohr sent the telegram to England as Germany invaded Denmark; it ended with the curious phrase, 'Tell cock croft and Maud Ray Kent'. The reference to John Cockcroft, a science working in the Ministry of Supply, was comprehensible, but the last part of the message was a puzzle. Frisch and Cockcroft worked out that it might be a garbled anagram of Radium Taken, a message that the Germans has snatched Denmark's radium stocks. For this reason, former governess called Maud Ray, who lived in Kent, never received the reassuring message Bohr had sent her about the safety of his family. The phrase preyed on the scientists' minds, however, and the committee ended up with the name Maud.(Much later, it turned out that the name had been ingeniously interpreted by civil servants as an acronym for Military Application of Uranium Detonation.)
 * British civil servants have used "M.A.U.D." as an acronym for Military Application of Uranium Detonation. There is an acronym "M.A.U.D." in the first page of the MAUD Committee report in March 1941 as real historical sources. And it is explained by “Clouds of Deceit Deadly: Legacy of Britain's Bomb Tests” written by Joan Smith in 1985 as below.
 * And a phrase "Military Application of Uranium Detonation" as "MAUD" is also used in the obituaries (memoirs) of Gowing published by the British Academy .ナルドの香油 (talk) 09:45, 19 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Activity - Liverpool
"The major part of the chain reaction would be completed in about $10 sec$ sec." I know nothing, but should that not be a negative exponent: $10 sec$? Globbet (talk) 21:51, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have corrected the text according to the source.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  23:40, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Activity - University of Oxford
The reference to Heinrich Kuhn (or Kühn) is to a photographer who became a Nazi, according to the German Wikipedia. I could not find any other suitable Heinrich Kühn on the German Wikipedia. --Drackles (talk) 19:11, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The link to the photographer is clearly wrong. We don't seem to have an article on the physicist Heinrich Gerhard Kuhn. TwoTwoHello (talk) 19:30, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I think we do. (Also on the German wikipedia here.) Linked. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  20:33, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

article is missing def of M.A.U.D.
Setting aside the move request of the past, the spelling out of this term should still be in the article! 50.111.57.134 (talk) 21:13, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I've made this edit addressing that. I've also seen an assertion somewhere that the committee was earlier named The Thompson Committee after its chairman; I may add that info if I run across a citeable supporting source. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:38, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * (added) Here, following on the above, I've rewritten the second paragraph of the lead which previously asserted that the committee was founded in response to the Frisch–Peierls memorandum. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Removed. This is already explained correctly in the article.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  19:21, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This needs discussion, per WP:BRD. These 3 edits replaced cite-supported content with unsupported content. The removed cite-supported version included what amounts to the assertions re naming of the unsupported version, with cite support added, as well as some additional cite-supported assertions which appear to have due weight for inclusion. According to WP:LEAD, the lead section "serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents [...] and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies." Perhaps the details of this should be expanded somewhere in the article body and be cited there instead of being included in the lead, but it seems to me that the article should mention both versions; also, support should be cited per WP:V. Also, there seems to be a bigger problem here -- the current version asserts, without support, that the committee was "founded in response to [the FP momorandum]". Page 446 in this source (cited in the removed material) makes it quite clear that the committee existed prior to the memorandum ("Peierls wrote a letter " [...] "a new committee had been formed with the name MAUD"). I am not going to edit war by reverting this change but, considering all of this, it seems to me that it ought to be reverted. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 21:23, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Bernstein is correct, but he is saying that the MAUD committee was formed in response to the Frisch-Peierls memorandum. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  21:58, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey - hawkeye - "Reverted unconstructive edits" - what are you talking about? These were sourced edits and now the article is right back in its most unhelpful state. Would you please knock it off and let the editor correctly add this needed clarification? Jesus Christ. Have a look at WP:OWN. 50.111.57.134 (talk) 06:41, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * (response from Wtmitchell) That's not the way I read that bit of the Bernstein paper. I found another source here which ought to settle this; it's a paper by Rudolf Peierls himself. It contains some recollections re the formation and naming of the MAUD committee on page 137, and says there: "[...] Chadwick's influence on the committee was very important. When the memorandum by Frisch and myself was received, he [...]". I take this as strong implication that the committee pre-existed the receipt of the memo. If these sequencing and causation details are significant enough to include in this WP article, however, it is not WP's task to decide which sources are correct and which are not or to choose what inferences to take from which sources. Rather, it is WP's task to present sourced descriptions of what cited reliable sources have to say about those significant details. I ask that my reverted edit be restored and, if there are problems with it, those problems be corrected and explained with reference to cited reliable sources. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 09:59, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The full cite for the Peierls source mentioned above is . Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:59, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Margaret Gowing says:"The sub-committee on the uranium bomb had already held two meetings in April 1940 before it was formally constituted by its parent committee, the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Warfare. Before long — in June — the C.S.SA.W. ceased to exist and the subcommittee achieved independent existence within the Ministry of Aircraft Production: even before it had achieved this independence however the sub-committee decided that it needed some less revealing name, preferably a camouflage name that would avoid the necessity of marking all letters secret. So the sub-committe decided early in its career that it should be known by the initials M.A.U.D."

- Margaret Gowing


 * Thus we have exact dates for its formation, and it does not predate the Frisch-Peierls memorandum. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  20:23, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I apologize for doing this so abruptly, but I'm going to have to drop this for now because of the press of things outside of Wikipedia. I need to pay more attention to some current and upcoming demands in real life and I'm going to reduce my WP activity to allow that. Your last comment and the source it refers to looks like a resolution of the sequencing between the memo and the origin of MAUD and is clearer re causation of the committee formation than other sources I've mentioned. My concern is lack of sourcing to support article assertions more than the assertion specifics, and that source may be a good one to cite. I've run across this book, page which also might be a good source to cite; The page I've linked is in a section of that book headed The Frisch and Peierls Memorandum which begins a few pages back from there. Our discussion above has gotten away from the paragraph re the naming of the committee that is also involved in the reversion under discussion -- that source I've just linked has some discussion of that as well. I don't think any of this belongs in the lead section, which is supposed to introduce and summarize the article. IMO, info on this probably ought to be in a body section, perhaps headed something like Formation, and probably with more content than is in those paragraphs in the article lead section. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:17, 2 June 2021 (UTC)