Einstein and Nazi physics: When science meets ideology and prejudice

Authors

  • Philip Ball Science writer and author (London, UK).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.10.13472

Keywords:

Albert Einstein, Nazism, anti-Semitism, science and ideology

Abstract

In the 1920s and 30s, in a Germany with widespread and growing anti-Semitism, and later with the rise of Nazism, Albert Einstein’s physics faced hostility and was attacked on racial grounds. That assault was orchestrated by two Nobel laureates in physics, who asserted that stereotypical racial features are exhibited in scientific thinking. Their actions show how ideology can infect and inflect science. Reviewing this episode in the current context remains an instructive and cautionary tale.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Philip Ball, Science writer and author (London, UK).

Science writer and author (London, UK). He previously worked as an editor at Nature , and his many books on science and its interactions with the broader culture include Serving the Reich: The struggle for the soul of physics under Hitler (2014). His last book is Beyond weird: Why everything you thought you knew about quantum physics is different (2018).

References

Cassidy, D. C. (2009). Beyond uncertainty: Heisenberg, quantum physics, and the bomb. New York: Bellevue Literary Press.

Clark, R. W. (1973). Einstein: The life and times. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Einstein, A. (1949). The world as I see it.New York: Philosophical Library.

Einstein, A. (1954). Ideas and opinions. New York: Bonanza Books.

Folsing, A. (1998). Albert Einstein: A biography. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Heilbron, J. L. (2000). The dilemmas of an upright man: Max Planck and the fortunes of German science. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hentschel, K. (Ed.). (1996). Physics and National Socialism: An anthology of primary sources. A. M. Hentschel (Transl.). Basel: Birkhauser Verlag.

Kershaw, I. (2008). Hitler, the Germans, and the final solution. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kurlander, E. (2009). Living with Hitler.New Haven: Yale University Press.

Mosse, G. L. (Ed.). (1966). Nazi culture: Intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich, p. 206. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. 

Nathan, O., & Norden, H. (Eds.). (1963). Einstein on peace. New York: Simon & Schuster. 

Rosbaud, P. (1945). Rosbaud correspondence and manuscripts 1945. (Series IV, Box 28, Folder 42). Samuel Goudsmit Papers. American Institute of Physics.

Szilard, L. (1979, March). Excerpts. Leo Szilard: His versions of the facts II. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 35(3), p. 55–59.

Van Dongen, J. (2007). Reactionaries and Einstein’s fame: “German Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science”, relativity, and the Bad Nauheim Meeting. Physics in Perspective, 9(2), 212–230. doi: 10.1007/s00016-006-0318-y

Walker, M. (1995). Nazi science: Myth, truth and the German atomic bomb. New York: Plenum.

Downloads

Published

2020-01-08

How to Cite

Ball, P. (2020). Einstein and Nazi physics: When science meets ideology and prejudice. Metode Science Studies Journal, (10), 147–155. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.10.13472
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    3211
  • PDF
    1184

Issue

Shades of science (2020)

Section

Science and Nazism. The unconfessed collaboration of scientists with National Socialism

License

All the documents in the OJS platform are open access and property of their respective authors.

Authors publishing in the journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors keep the rights and guarantee Metode Science Studies Journal the right to be the first publication of the document, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of authorship and publication in the journal.
  2. Authors are allowed and encouraged to spread their work through electronic means using personal or institutional websites (institutional open archives, personal websites or professional and academic networks profiles) once the text has been published.

Metrics