 I usually get very excited the moment I confirm what the next topic of my video will be. It usually entails a whole lot of in-depth research and analysis of the given subject. Ideas start to flow about the structure of my write-up, and I so look forward to the adventure of collecting the various imagery or visual mediums that usually assist me in telling the story. For this week's video, in all honesty, I was more excited than usual. The personality and history I was going to present was the Egyptian nuclear physicist Dr. Samira Moussa. She had so many trials, tribulations, achievements, discoveries, and even a conspiracy laid an end to her life. Samira's story was just so perfect. Samira was born on March 3, 1917, into a humble yet intellectual family of six in a village called Simbu Al-Kubra. Early in her childhood, life became difficult as her mother would be diagnosed with cancer and would eventually pass away shortly thereafter. Samira's heartache forced her to find solace in learning. And from the very first of her school years, Samira excelled at all levels, ranking first nationally in her primary and secondary education. Samira was such a prodigy, it is said that in her ninth year of schooling, she rewrote her governmental school's official Algebra textbook, thereby making it exponentially easier for her and her colleagues to grasp its contents. Samira had established for herself a clear educational journey in her mind. Although her grades allowed for it, she resisted the prestige and social default expectations by not applying to the College of Engineering at the Fuad I University, currently Cairo University, but instead applied and was accepted into the College of Sciences and more specifically into the physics program with a specialization in x-ray technology. Deep in her psyche, Samira was on a mission to find solutions for the treatment of cancer so that her mother's suffering and death would not be in vain. The physics program allowed for such a potential. Samira was highly talented in assimilating and challenging the various professors and knowledge being presented and this caught the eye of her eventual mentor, Dr. Ali Mustafa Musharrafa, himself a theoretic physicist who had great international impacts on the development of quantum theory and the theory of relativity. In 1939, Samira would eventually graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Radiology with first-class honors and in recognition of her value to Dr. Musharrafa, the college dean at the time, Samira would become the first female associate professor in the College of Sciences. But Samira still and more than ever had a hunger in her for more knowledge and a short year later she would receive her master's degree in gas thermal convection, then followed by her PhD in atomic radiation in the mid-1940s. Her focus now was to excel in practice and not strictly in theory. And with this shift in mindset, Samira made her mission statement known to the world. I'll make nuclear treatment for cancer as available and as cheap as aspirin. And so began her life in the university laboratories that were newly catered specifically for her ingenuity and vision and subsequently one of her most famous and valuable discoveries came to life. And that was a creation of an equation that will revolutionize the production of cheap nuclear technology and more critically for more common and less expensive metals such as copper. But with her aggressive efforts to unveil new territories in nuclear physics, Samira felt a certain guilt towards the weaponized application of atomic technology and more specifically her newly discovered advancements in the field. Her witnessing the recent World War II ending atomic bomb use in Nagasaki and Hiroshima struck deep into her conscience. In an effort to alleviate her fears, Samira helped establish the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority and would take a leading effort in organizing the International Atomic Energy for Peace Conference and was a key proponent of the banner, Atoms for Peace, that would eventually become the brand for many nuclear non-reliferation conferences in the decades to come. With her multifaceted efforts in atomic energy, Samira was granted a full-bright scholarship in atomic radiation in 1950, where she conducted research at the University of California Berkeley. Such a prestigious position and her eventual pioneering success at UC Berkeley, much to the chagrin of her academic and scientific colleagues, Samira was granted visitation access to highly confidential U.S. atomic facilities. As Samira's work started bearing more fruit, she was approached by U.S. government officials who offered her a lucrative proposal in both becoming a U.S. citizen and granted substantial funds and facilities to further study and research the nuclear domain. But she quickly turned down such nonsense and stated, Egypt, my dear homeland, is waiting for me. A few weeks after this episode, three weeks after the Egyptian Revolution that toppled King Faroq and the monarchy and replaced it with a military regime, Samira was on her way to the airport, back to Egypt, driven by an Air Force civilian escort named Arling Orwin Kressler, when the car suddenly veered off the road and flew off the edge of the cliff and crashed downwards from a 15-meter drop. Samira was killed instantly, 35 years young in 1952. No driver was found. The Egyptian nation was shocked beyond belief with the sudden loss. Rumors started to flow that the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, were behind the assassination of the Egyptian star. And it was this assassination that got me connecting to so many subsequent events in the 20th century that were linked with Arab or Muslim nuclear or atomic scientists whose lives were ended prematurely and mostly at the hands of the Israeli Mossad. Even Mosher Rafa himself was a potential assassination victim as he died suddenly when he was only 51 years old. And so I started my digging and fact-finding process into the events of Samira Musa's life I dived headfirst, not knowing what gems I might find. And what I found was beyond incredible. If you know, you know, and if you don't, then join the Chronicles, where we present content about Middle Eastern history, culture, and heritage. Samira Musa was an enigma. I couldn't figure out what was real and what part of her life wasn't. The conspiracy of her death circumstances was what I had assumed would be the truly questionable part of her story. I was mistaken. There were so many more parts that had to be challenged. I tried fact-checking all my resources, Arabic and English, cross-referencing the data from one to the next. What I found was a mess of conflicting narratives and facts. For example, many sources convey that Samira was indeed involved in the establishment of the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority. There are zero factual basis for such statements, since the Egyptian Authority was established in 1955, three years after Samira's death. In the same year 1955 was another key event that was linked to Samira, and that's when the Atomic Energy for Peace Conference took place. Again, it is stated in almost all evidence I have examined that Samira did indeed either initiate this event or had a major hand in its establishment. Neither were true. Atoms for Peace, the slogan she supposedly came up with, not her. The other major concern I had pertaining to Samira's achievements was her receipt of a Fulbright Scholarship sometime between 1946 and her death. Why 1946? While 1946 is the year the Fulbright program was signed into existence by Harry Truman, and in checking the program's database for previous beneficiaries of the scholarship, no Samira Musa can be found. No other spelling or composition of her name that I inputted would yield her identity. Another weak element to the narrative of Samira's supposed life of ultra-success was when she was given scholarships or research grants in the United Kingdom and the United States. Apparently she had not only attended the US-based UC Berkeley, but also the St. Louis University of Missouri and the University of Tennessee Oakridge. Not one of these institutions recognizes Samira Musa as a student or researcher. I would for sure if she attended my university. Various sources lay claim that Samira's Fulbright Scholarship was one to one of these educational institutions. Definitely not all three. The very strange and coincidental angle of these three locations was that they were all directly involved with the building and testing of the atomic bombs that were launched over Japan in 1945. Was this an attempt at her glorification by association with an immensely secretive program? Was it purely a lazy and superficial enrichment to further pad an exaggerated greatness, as for the university or college in the United Kingdom that was supposedly attended by Samira? Nothing. No information or name is available. All sources only state that she attended a British institution to further her atomic research. And this takes us to the final point of confusion. Her discovery. The famous equation that was to release and commercialize nuclear technology. Where is it? Where is this equation that would have made nuclear therapy as widespread as aspirin? Apparently, the equation wasn't about nuclear technology at all, but more applicable to an improved and cheaper way for x-ray generation. We as Arabs don't need superheroes. We just want heroes that are strongly grounded in historic facts and are accurately represented. Samuza's story up until after her receiving a PhD in atomic radiation in the 1940s in its own right was an amazing and substantial success. After that the further advancements in her research to greatly improve x-ray technology immediate hero status. For sure. So why do we have to embellish our heroes with so many lazily concocted accolades when with a mere scratch on the surface of the fabricated elements of their lives our heroes become prone to criticism and ruin? Our inability as Arabs to document our history, even one most recent with clear-cut records and facts doesn't give us the right to embellish the careers and lives of those that have departed. Semi-Ramusa is a role model to Arab women and women across the world. We must be honest towards her legacy and equally, if not more so, honest with ourselves. Otherwise, we cast her away into the realm of falsehoods, irrelevance, and non-existence. Semi-Ramusa was an amazing person, extremely intelligent, gifted, and passionate about what the stars had chosen for her as a calling. She died too early and could have done wonders for medicine and technology, if only she survived. But ifs are a dangerous thing in our Arab culture. So let's just leave it at that and stick with what actually took place. Black and white, nothing more.