Synopses & Reviews
After World War II, most scientists in Germany maintained that they had been apolitical or actively resisted the Nazi regime, but the true story is much more complicated. In
Serving the Reich, Philip Ball takes a fresh look at that controversial history, contrasting the career of Peter Debye, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, with those of two other leading physicists in Germany during the Third Reich: Max Planck, the elder statesman of physics after whom Germanyand#8217;s premier scientific society is now named, and Werner Heisenberg, who succeeded Debye as director of the institute when it became focused on the development of nuclear power and weapons. and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
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Mixing history, science, and biography, Balland#8217;s gripping exploration of the lives of scientists under Nazism offers a powerful portrait of moral choice and personal responsibility, as scientists navigated and#147;the grey zone between complicity and resistance.and#8221; Balland#8217;s account of the different choices these three men and their colleagues made shows how there can be no clear-cut answers or judgement of their conduct. Yet, despite these ambiguities, Ball makes it undeniable that the German scientific establishment as a whole mounted no serious resistance to the Nazis, and in many ways acted as a willing instrument of the state.
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Serving the Reich considers what this problematic history can tell us about the relationship of science and politics today. Ultimately, Ball argues, a determination to present science as an abstract inquiry into nature that is and#147;above politicsand#8221; can leave science and scientists dangerously compromised and vulnerable to political manipulation.
Review
The Dilemmas of an Upright Man is a reissue of the life of Max Planck...Hollywood would title it Triumph and Tragedy. Planck's quantum theory transformed physics, but his career period was rocked by two world wars. He stayed in Nazi Germany throughout...Although he could have escaped, he wouldn't leave. Some contemporaries found his obduracy hard to understand. Science News
Review
and#8220;Asks important questions, not just about twentieth-century German science but about the nature of science and the response of scientists to the political world we perforce inhabit. All scientists should read and ponder its contents.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Ball does an outstanding service by reminding us how powerful and sometimes confusing the pressures were and how it was not implausible to think that scientists could and should stay and#8216;above politics.and#8217; . . . Packed with dramatic, moving, and even comical moments.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Balland#8217;s book shows what can happen to morality when cleverness and discovery are valued above all else.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A fascinating account of the moral dilemmas faced by German physicists working within Nazism. Impeccably researched.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A fine book.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;How much did Nazism compromise its scientists? In this polished account, Ball finds that the jury is still out, even as the evidence mounts and the pursuit of firsthand records and documentary testimony continues.and#8221;
Synopsis
In this moving and eloquent portrait, John Heilbron describes how the founder of quantum theory rose to the pinnacle of German science. With great understanding, he shows how Max Planck suffered morally and intellectually as his lifelong habit of service to his country and to physics was confronted by the realities of World War I and the brutalities of the Third Reich. In an afterword written for this edition, he weighs the recurring questions among historians and scientists about the costs to others, and to Planck himself, of the painful choices he faced in attempting to build an RarkS to carry science and scientists through the storms of Nazism. RThis story of a fruitful but ultimately tragic life is extremely well told and needs to be more widely known.S QJohn Ziman, Times Higher Education Supplement RHeilbron gives a very readable, and very balanced, account of the successes and disasters of this great physicist, without attempting to pass judgment. But the character of the man comes clearly through the narrative.S QRudolf Peierls, New York Review of Books
Synopsis
In this moving and eloquent portrait, Heilbron describes how the founder of quantum theory rose to the pinnacle of German science. With great understanding, he shows how Max Planck suffered morally and intellectually as his lifelong habit of service to his country and to physics was confronted by the realities of World War I and the brutalities of the Third Reich.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-241) and index.
About the Author
J. L. Heilbron, formerly Professor of History and the Vice Chancellor at the University of California at Berkeley, is a Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. He was awarded the George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society in 1993 for his contributions to the field.
Worcester College, Oxford University