Great Scientists Wage the Great War - Hardcover

William Van Der Kloot

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1781554021 ISBN 13: 9781781554029

Publisher: Fonthill Media Ltd, 2014

Synopsis

The work of six great scientists and its impact on the war is described for general readers in this book. Lawrence Bragg pinpointed the position of enemy artillery pieces with sound ranging, which enabled British tanks to break through in late 1917 and 1918. His father worked with the French to develop high frequency echolocation; if the war had gone on longer sonar would have curbed the U-boats. Ernest Starling led a group that discovered the cause of wound shock and saved shocked men with artificial plasma. He utilized what was known about metabolism to ration food fairly in Britain while improving the poor s nutrition. Germans starved. Otto Hahn worked on poisons for gas warfare and devised and tested filters to trap the poisons. He also became an expert on tactics for breaking through enemy lines with gas. Chaim Weizmann and other chemists produced molecules essential for making high explosives; German chemists enabled their side to keep in the war. Anti-aircraft defence was developed by the physiologist A. V. Hill who led more than 100 scientists and mathematicians, youths or elders on either side of conscription age, who learned how to aim supersonic shells to explode near fast-moving targets. The final chapter shows how two of them prepared British science for its crucial role in WW2, while the German protagonist, who in the interwar years discovered nuclear fission the basis of the atom bomb remained on the side-lines longing for the defeat of the Nazis and after the war leading in the reestablishment of international science.

About this title

About the Author

A book about history and science should be written by someone with feet planted firmly in both camps. William Van der Kloot was born in the US and served in the US Navy at the tail end of WW2. He studied Biology at Harvard, with shorter periods at the University of Chicago and the University of Cambridge. He researched and taught at Harvard, Cornell, NYU School of Medicine, and Stony Brook University, where he became Distinguished Professor of Physiology and Biophysics. He has published some 160 papers, including several on the history of neuroscience. His interest in the Great War began in childhood from the tales of his father and uncles; as he worked in science he studied the War on the side. Later in life he left the laboratory bench for the archives and libraries, where step by step he uncovered how much scientists had altered the course of the war. A surprise because so little has been written about it. In the past decade the Royal Society has published five of his articles on science in WW1 and he has published two books on other aspects of the War. It is hard to imagine a better preparation for writing the present book, which tells general readers what six deeply involved, preeminent scientists did.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fonthill Media Ltd
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1781554021
• ISBN 13: 9781781554029
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 244