text: Before departing for the United States on 7 January 1939 with his son Erik to attend the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics, Bohr promised Frisch that he would not mention fission until the papers appeared in print, but during the Atlantic crossing on the , Bohr discussed the mechanism of fission with Leon Rosenfeld, and failed to inform him that the information was confidential. On arrival in New York City on 16 January, they were met by Fermi and his wife Laura Capon, and by John Wheeler, who had been a fellow at Bohrs institute in 1934–1935. As it happened, there was a meeting of Princeton Universitys Physics Journal Club that evening, and when Wheeler asked Rosenfeld if he had any news to report, Rosenfeld told them. An embarrassed Bohr fired off a note to Nature defending Meitner and Frischs claim to the priority of the discovery. Hahn was annoyed that while Bohr mentioned his and Strassmanns work in the note, he cited only Meitner and Frisch.
  News spread quickly of the new discovery, which was correctly seen as an entirely novel physical effect with great scientific—and potentially practical—possibilities. Isidor Isaac Rabi and Willis Lamb, two Columbia University physicists working at Princeton, heard the news and carried it back to Columbia. Rabi said he told Fermi; Fermi gave credit to Lamb. For Fermi, the news came as a profound embarrassment, as the transuranic elements that he had partly been awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering had not been transuranic elements at all, but fission products. He added a footnote to this effect to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Bohr soon thereafter went from Princeton to Columbia to see Fermi. Not finding Fermi in his office, Bohr went down to the cyclotron area and found Herbert L. Anderson. Bohr grabbed him by the shoulder and said: "Young man, let me explain to you about something new and exciting in physics."