Nuclear Physics and Technology in Finland from World War II to the Early Cold War

Abstract In Finland, as elsewhere, the emergence of nuclear energy as a viable technology in the 1930s led to strong cross connections between nuclear physics and the concurrent politics. Lennart Simons from the University of Helsinki was the only internationally recognized nuclear physicist in Finland, but when the Finnish atomic energy initiative was created in 1955, Simons was completely sidelined from the investments into research on nuclear energy technology, although he continued to be the leading person in basic nuclear physics. In this article I discuss the Cold War political tensions in Finland and the long term effects of these internal disputes within Finnish nuclear science on its research structures.