Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler - Hardcover

Ball, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847922481 ISBN 13: 9781847922489

Publisher: The Bodley Head Ltd, 2013

Synopsis

Serving the Reich tells the story of physics under Hitler. While some scientists tried to create an Aryan physics that excluded any ‘Jewish ideas’, many others made compromises and concessions as they continued to work under the Nazi regime. Among them were three world-renowned physicists:

Max Planck, pioneer of quantum theory, regarded it as his moral duty to carry on under the regime.

Peter Debye, a Dutch physicist, rose to run the Reich’s most important research institute before leaving for the United States in 1940.

Werner Heisenberg, discovered the Uncertainty Principle, and became the leading figure in Germany’s race for the atomic bomb.

After the war most scientists in Germany maintained they had been apolitical or even resisted the regime: Debye claimed that he had gone to America to escape Nazi interference in his research; Heisenberg and others argued that they had deliberately delayed production of the atomic bomb.

Mixing history, science and biography, Serving the Reich is a gripping exploration of moral choices under a totalitarian regime. Here are human dilemmas, failures to take responsibility, three lives caught between the idealistic goals of science and a tyrannical ideology.

About this title

About the Author

Philip Ball writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and worked for many years as an editor for physical sciences at Nature. His books cover a wide range of scientific and cultural phenomena, and include Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another (winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books), The Music Instinct, Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything, Serving The Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Science Under Hitler and Invisible: The History of the Unseen from Plato to Particle Physics.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Bodley Head Ltd
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847922481
• ISBN 13: 9781847922489
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320