Many people helped me create this novel. My biggest debt goes to my personal physics adviser, S. C. Wright, from the University of Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute and Department of Physics. He directed my reading and answered the questions of a physics novice with great kindness and thoroughness.
Dr. Johann Marton, director of the Stefan-Meyer-Institut in Vienna, was generous with both his time and his insights in stepping me through the history of physics in Vienna in the twentieth century.
Thanks to Dr. Marton, I received advice from Dr. Stefan Sienell, MAS, director of the Archives of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, as well as from Dr. Thomas Maisel, director of the Archives for the University of Vienna.
Michael Geoffrey, Chicago patent lawyer, was a most helpful resource for the part of the novel that deals with patent law, with whether patents held by foreign nationals were recognized in U.S. courts, and other critical plot issues.
Leah Richardson, librarian at the University of Chicago Library’s Special Collections, advised me on library policy for digging up names of people consulting library materials.
Margaret Elliot of Scotland discussed the education high school girls received in chemistry and physics in the 1930s.
Vicki Hill assisted with the German used by Kitty Binder and Lotty Herschel in this novel.
Jonathan Paretsky, who has reviewed trial records for drug cases, helped describe the drug-manufacturing subculture, especially meth production. He also researched federal warrantless searches and the action of chapter 26 for me.
I’m indebted to the late Stan Ovshinsky for the motto “In God We trust, all others show data.”
Karen Pendleton was my inspiration for the offerings at Wenger’s Prairie Market.
The technical description of the Innsbruck reactor is copied loosely from Giacomo Grasso et al., “Neutronics Study of the 1945 Haigerlich B-VIII Nuclear Reactor,” Physics in Perspective, September 2009.
All mistakes in this novel are completely the creation of the author, as are all the fictional events. Although some historic figures are mentioned in passing, such as Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller, the main players on my stage are complete fabrications whose strutting and fretting are due to me alone.