How physicist Sameera Moussa went from a role model to a target

Science and the technology it enables have always had a close relationship with warfare. But World War II saw science's destructive power raised to new levels. As the threat of nuclear annihilation remained high for much of the Cold War, many in the public became uneasy with their governments and the scientists working for them.

Many physicists realized that the genie was out of the bottle and recognized this mistrust—or shared it. They created conferences or drafted policies to distance themselves from the nuclear threat. Others tried to spin nuclear technology more positively by focusing on the advances it enabled in energy or medicine. These efforts to reassure the public have continued through today as scientists have taken similar actions for newer, potentially destructive technologies such as gene editing.

During World War II, Sameera Moussa, a relatively unknown Egyptian physicist, was one of the key individuals who tried to use atomic energy for good and made efforts to involve the public in that choice. Her work makes her a worthy role model for women and physicists worldwide, but she’s largely unknown because her crusade for peaceful nuclear power would eventually cost her her life. Moussa was assassinated at age 35 in a case that remains unsolved today.

Moussa’s early life and work on X-rays

Unfortunately, of the few records of Moussa's life today, most are second-hand accounts or retellings of rumors, making it difficult to track her movements. She was born just north of Cairo on March 3, 1917. There isn’t much information on her childhood, but we know her mother died of cancer when Moussa was young. Her mother’s death would later inspire Moussa to study the use of radiation for cancer treatments. After her mother’s passing, Moussa and her father moved to Cairo, where her father established a hotel business. Some reports claim that Moussa’s father was a political activist, which may have inspired her later activism.

After success as a primary and secondary school student, Moussa was accepted to Cairo University’s nuclear physics program, specifically focusing on X-rays. Moussa could not have picked a better field of study for the 1930s. X-rays were becoming a popular tool for many hospitals and private practices, as it was then the norm for each establishment to own an X-ray machine. In the US, this fostered the formation of many organizations of X-ray technicians and X-ray-focused journals. Europe had an even more extended history with X-ray development, as scientist Marie Curie transported a mobile X-ray machine across World War I battlefields.

Like others before her, Moussa studied radioactive isotopes used to create medical images, a technique still used today. Her PhD work caught the eye of Cairo University’s chair of science, Moustafa Mousharafa, who recruited Moussa as a lecturer. Later, she became an assistant professor there, apparently becoming the first woman anywhere to teach in a university setting while getting her PhD. It was a nearly impossible achievement, as British and other foreign professors still dominated many Egyptian universities. Nevertheless, Moussa achieved a series of firsts.

Finding a formula for nuclear fission

Thanks to her reputation, Moussa could travel to the UK in the mid-1940s, where she finished her PhD. There, she collaborated with several researchers to make further advancements in nuclear physics. With her colleagues, Moussa developed an equation that helped explain how to generate X-rays from cheaper metals like copper, which could help make medical imaging more affordable. According to a 2022 Inside Arabia article, Moussa’s “research laid the groundwork for a revolution and the affordability and safety of nuclear medicine.”

Excited by her discovery, Moussa kept her focus on medical applications, including shortening patient X-ray exposure times and making X-ray procedures more mobile and flexible. She said, “I’ll make nuclear treatment as available and as cheap as Aspirin.” Still, she was concerned that this formula could be twisted to create something much more deadly: an atomic bomb.

While no records indicate where Moussa was during the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it’s likely that she was still in the United Kingdom. Seeing the potential use of nuclear energy for warfare, Moussa organized the Atomic Energy for Peace conference in the UK under the slogan “Atoms for Peace” (a slogan later adopted by President Dwight Eisenhower in a 1953 speech). The meeting was well-attended by her fellow scientists and led to recommendations for creating a committee to oversee nuclear hazards, such as atomic weapons.

Promoting a false peace

Due to the devastation of the atomic bombs, there was widespread fear about nuclear power. To quell the hysteria, the US and UK governments tried to spin a positive story. For example, they encouraged scientists to host conferences, such as the Pugwash Conference in Canada, where, for the first time since the war, scientists from the former Allied and Axis countries came together to discuss the future of atomic weapons. In addition, governments worldwide encouraged scientists to promote nuclear benefits and avoid technical, scientific jargon, as it could create further confusion among the public.

However, the Western world realized nuclear energy’s potential power; it wanted to harness it and to keep its opponents from doing so. To hide their intentions, the US and UK used “peaceful atom” as a political tool to broker exclusive deals with countries that had uranium deposits, like Brazil and South Africa. In his book, The Wretched Atom, Dr. Jacob Darwin Hamblin of Oregon State University writes that the idea of the peaceful atom “took advantage of social aspirations, anxieties, and environmental vulnerabilities, especially in the developing world.”

Because these deals often traded weapons for uranium, associating the label “peaceful atom” with them was a complete sham. To avoid a race for uranium, the US (and later the UK) downplayed its importance, citing medicine and agriculture (like pest control or sterilization) as critical benefits. Scientists who used the narrative of a “peaceful atom” provided cover for the race for uranium and helped create a high-pressure and high-secrecy environment within governmental research facilities around the globe as many countries began stockpiling nuclear materials.

Moussa found herself amid this new arms race when she visited the United States in the early 1950s, having been awarded one of the first Fulbright scholarships. She went to the University of Missouri to continue her research. From there, Moussa connected with several researchers in California to tour some of their nuclear facilities. Moussa wrote in a letter to her father: “I have been able to visit nuclear plants in America, and when I come back to Egypt, I will be of great service to my country and be able to serve the cause of peace.”

But before she could even step foot on the premises, Moussa found herself the focus of a security investigation. As she was not an American citizen, many wondered if she was a spy trying to obtain information about the US’s top-secret research on nuclear energy for other countries. While Moussa was eventually cleared of suspicion, the government offered her American citizenship to avoid future issues. She declined the offer, saying, “Egypt, my homeland, is waiting for me.” In the end, this refusal may have cost her life.

An unsolved assassination

In 1952, Moussa visited a nuclear research facility near the University of California, Berkeley. While there are multiple accounts of what happened next, the general themes of these stories are the same. One night, Moussa received an invitation to a dinner or a power plant visit (depending on the source) and asked to be driven to the event. She hopped in the back seat of the car, and the driver sped off. However, things took a sharp turn at one point on the Pacific Coast Highway. Her driver suddenly swerved the car off the road and jumped out as the car plummeted 40 feet off a cliff, killing Moussa. Some accounts claim that another vehicle forced the crash, but in either case, the fall aroused suspicion among police and national authorities.

Because the driver was never identified after the crash and the invitation that Moussa received turned out to be fake, many speculated that Moussa was assassinated. Some rumors suggested that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was behind the death, trying to stop Egypt from creating nuclear weapons. Other experts suspected that this could be the work of the CIA, believing that Moussa had seen too much during her visit. Her murder remains unsolved to this day.

While we may never know what happened, Moussa's tragic death at 35 showcases how important she was at the time—in that someone saw her as a threat.

Moussa was among a number of people involved in the "Atoms for Peace" cause who met untimely deaths. The legacy of "Atoms for Peace" has been viewed as producing mixed results, as the general public never fully regained their trust in scientists. Despite many efforts since, this mistrust continues, from flat-out science denial to skepticism about vaccines and climate change.

A rediscovered role model

Today, Moussa is a role model for young female scientists worldwide, though she’s best known by Egyptian students. As Dr. Ruth Mateos de Cabo, professor at the University Foundation San Pablo CEU, explains: “In general, role models can inspire, empower, and support students who share their backgrounds by showing them what is possible and how to achieve it. Therefore, the more similar the background, the easier it will be for the students to engage with them and even to see in their shoes. For example, having teachers who share their racial/ethnic background has been discovered to increase students’ academic achievement, motivation, and expectations.”

In her research, Mateos de Cabo has found that female role models of similar ethnicities can challenge traditional gender roles while inspiring young women. This is especially important for the field of physics, where currently only 20 percent of researchers in the US are women, and some experts predict that it will take until the next century for half of physics researchers to be women. This inequality makes finding role models even more important for inspiring the next generation—and even more difficult.

“One of the primary challenges in implementing female role models in the education system and the scientific community is the lack of female representation in these fields,” Mateos de Cabo explained. “According to UNESCO, only 35 percent of STEM students globally are women, occupying only 28 percent of research and development jobs worldwide. This lack of representation makes it difficult for female students to identify with successful women in their field, making it challenging for them to view themselves as potential role models.”

Increasing the awareness of stories like Moussa's can potentially increase the representation of women from all backgrounds. “She was a brilliant, patriotic, and powerful Egyptian woman,” explained Egyptian researcher Maha Metawei of the Electronics Research Institute in Cairo. “We’re all very proud of her. We see her as a beautiful Egyptian face, a brilliant mind who laid the groundwork for cancer treatment using radiation, and a loyal Egyptian who insisted on returning home with her research findings after her scholarship in the United States. In addition, we see her speaking out against nuclear weapons in an era when people were terrified of nuclear weapons threats.”

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry is the science communicator at JILA (a joint physics research institute between the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado Boulder) and a freelance science journalist. Her main writing focuses are quantum physics, quantum technology, deep technology, social media, and the diversity of people in these fields, particularly women and people from minority ethnic and racial groups. Follow her on LinkedIn or visit her website.

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