WITHIN days of moving to Argentina, Ronald Richter stood before the president. The Austrian physicist had an incredible pitch: he’d found a way of generating unlimited, controlled energy from the power of a tiny sun. He had, he said, cracked the challenge of nuclear fusion. It was 1948, and President Juan Perón was looking for new technologies to foster economic independence. His plan to create a “New Argentina” hinged on industrial growth, but his uncompromising style had alienated much of the country’s scientific community. So he was eager to hear ideas from European scientists