The Göttingen Eighteen was a group of eighteen leading nuclear researchers of the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 who wrote the Göttingen Manifesto on April 12, 1957, opposing Chancellor Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman. He was the chancellor of the West Germany from 1949 to 1963. He is widely recognised as a person who led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that had forged close relations with old enemies France,...

 and Defense Secretary Franz-Josef Strauß's move to arm the West German army, the Bundeswehr

Bundeswehr

The Bundeswehr consists of the unified armed forces of Germany and their civil administration and procurement authorities...

, with tactical nuclear weapon

Tactical nuclear weapon

A tactical nuclear weapon refers to a nuclear weapon which is designed to be used on a battlefield in military situations. This is as opposed to strategic nuclear weapons which are designed to menace large populations, to damage the enemy's ability to wage war, or for general deterrence...

s.

The eighteen atomic scientists were: Fritz Bopp, Max Born

Max Born

Max Born was a German-born physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s...

, Rudolf Fleischmann

Rudolf Fleischmann

Rudolf Fleischmann was a German experimental nuclear physicist from Erlangen, Bavaria. He worked for Walther Bothe at the Physics Institute of the University of Heidelberg and then at the Institute for Physics of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research...

, Walther Gerlach, Otto Hahn

Otto Hahn

Otto Hahn FRS was a German chemist and Nobel laureate, a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is regarded as "the father of nuclear chemistry". Hahn was a courageous opposer of Jewish persecution by the Nazis and after World War II he became a passionate campaigner...

, Otto Haxel

Otto Haxel

Otto Haxel was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project. After the war, he was on the staff of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen...

, Werner Heisenberg

Werner Heisenberg

Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory...

, Hans Kopfermann

Hans Kopfermann

Hans Kopfermann was a German atomic and nuclear physicist. He devoted his entire career to spectroscopic investigations, and he did pioneering work in measuring nuclear spin...

, Max von Laue

Max von Laue

Max Theodor Felix von Laue was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals...

, Heinz Maier-Leibnitz

Heinz Maier-Leibnitz

Heinz Maier-Leibnitz was a German physicist. He made contributions to nuclear spectroscopy, coincidence measurement techniques, radioactive tracers for biochemistry and medicine, and neutron optics...

, Josef Mattauch

Josef Mattauch

Josef Mattauch was a German physicist known for his work in the investigation of the isotopic abundances by mass spectrometry. He developed the Mattauch isobar rule in 1934.-Mattauch-Herzog geometry mass spectrometer:...

, Friedrich Adolf Paneth, Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after being nominated by Albert Einstein, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or...

, Wolfgang Riezler, Fritz Straßmann, Wilhelm Walcher

Wilhelm Walcher

Wilhelm Walcher was a German experimental physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club; he worked on mass spectrometers for isotope separation. After the war, he was director of the Institute of Physics at the University of Marburg...

, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker

Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the research team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under Werner Heisenberg's leadership...

 and Karl Wirtz

Karl Wirtz

Karl Eugen Julius Wirtz was a German nuclear physicist. He was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces and incarcerated at Farm Hall for six months in 1945 under Operation Epsilon.-Education:...

.

These eighteen people were leading researchers and members of public institutions for research on nuclear energy

Nuclear power

Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...

 and technology in West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 in that time.

The group's name was chosen because many of the signatories were connected with the university town of Göttingen

Göttingen

Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...

, and as a reference to the 19th century Göttingen Seven

Göttingen Seven

The Göttingen Seven were a group of seven professors from Göttingen. In 1837 they protested against the abolition or alteration of the constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover by Ernest Augustus and refused to swear an oath to the new king of Hanover...

.