This is a history of one of the oldest and most important scientific societies, the German Physical Society, during the Nazi regime and immediate postwar period. When Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Physical Society included prominent Jewish scientists as members, including Fritz Haber and Albert Einstein. As Jewish scientists lost their jobs and emigrated, the Society gradually lost members. In 1938, under pressure from the Nazi Ministry of Science, Education and Culture, the Society forced out the last of its Jewish colleagues. This action was just the most prominent example of the tension between accommodation and autonomy that characterized the challenges facing physicists in the Society. They strove to retain as much autonomy as possible, but tried to achieve this by accommodating themselves to Nazi policies, which culminated in the campaign by the Society's president to place physics in the service of the war effort.

This book details the effects of the Nazi regime on the German Physical Society.

About the Author
Dieter Hoffmann is a Senior Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and a Professor of History of Science at Humboldt University in Berlin. Hoffmann has co-authored two books in English: Science under Socialism: East Germany in Comparative Perspective (1999) and The Emergence of Modern Physics (1996), as well as several books published in German. Hoffmann is a member of the editorial boards for journals Physikalische Blatter and Physics in Perspective. His articles have appeared in Physics in Perspective and Physics Today. He is a member of the German Physical Society; the German Society for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine; and the History of Science Society. Mark Walker is the John Bigelow Professor of History at Union College. He is the author of Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atom Bomb (1995) and German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939-1949 (Cambridge University Press, 1989). He has co-authored several books, including The Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Politics and Science in Wartime: Comparative International Perspectives on the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes (2005) and Science and Ideology: A Comparative History (2003). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Contemporary History, Physics Today, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Nature, Physics in Perspective, Minerva and Metascience.

Reviews
'This fine volume explores in detail for the first time in English the role of the German Physical Society from the Nazi takeover of power in 1933 into the early postwar years, and includes comparisons with chemical and mathematical societies. The book is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of the possibility as well as the costs of the relative autonomy of science in dictatorships, and also to our understanding of the institutional and cultural reconstruction of the sciences in West Germany after 1945.' Mitchell G. Ash, University of Vienna



Book Information
ISBN 9781107006843
Author Dieter Hoffmann
Format Hardback
Page Count 482
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 810g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 164mm * 37mm