"Nothing But Politics"

When Communist Frederic Joliot-Curie was fired last April as head of France's Atomic Energy Commission, 13 fellow members protested. "We wish to assure M. Joliot-Curie," they said,."that in spite of this measure he retains our entire confidence and our profound attachment."

Last week one of the 13 so profoundly attached to the deposed Red stepped into his job. Socialist Francis Perrin, co-worker of Joliot-Curie's at the College de France, was appointed by the government, nosing out Jean Thibaud, director of the Institute of Atomic Physics at Lyon and member of the right-wing UDSR party. At the same time, the middle-of-the-road government, which is trying to carry atomic fission on both its shoulders, dropped Joliot-Curie's fellow-traveling wife Irene from the Atomic Commission. This was supposed to appease the antiCommunists.

Behind Socialist Perrin's triumph some thoughtful folk professed to see a measure of Communist maneuvering. Joliot-Curie heads the nuclear chemistry laboratory at the College de France, and Perrin the experimental physics laboratory at the same institution. American visitors have reported remarkable goings-on at the College. Physicist Alexander Zucker of the Oak Ridge, Tenn. National Laboratory wrote in the current issue of Physics Today: "There is a Communist cell meeting every week . . . Laboratories in Paris are known by their political affiliations rather than by the work they do. Thus we have Clerical laboratories, Communist laboratories, Socialist laboratories . . ."

Although Socialist Perrin is not suspected of being a Communist or a fellow traveler, he is certainly more acceptable to the Reds than Thibaud, who is an outspoken antiCommunist. When a learned scientific paper by Thibaud reporting a discovery concerning atomic nuclei was submitted to the Academy of Science, observers considered it more than a coincidence that two bright students of Joliot-Curie should immediately produce papers reporting similar findings. Their papers, forwarded to the academy by Joliot-Curie, switched the limelight from Thibaud, who had been getting a big play in the non-Communist press.

Thibaud was furious. He protested to the academy; then wrote to the Atomic Commission resigning an appointment to its Scientific Council. "There is no more science in France," Thibaud told reporters hotly, "science has become nothing but politics."

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