An incisive and revealing exploration of the fate of physics under the Nazis - and how scientific idealism led to accommodation with a totalitarian regime.
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.
Ball's book shows what can happen to morality when cleverness and
discovery are valued above all else
*New Statesman*
Ball does an outstanding service by reminding us how powerful and
sometimes confusing the pressures were… Packed with dramatic,
moving and even comical moments
*Nature*
A fascinating account of the moral dilemmas faced by German
physicists working within Nazism. Impeccably researched
*Tablet*
An engrossing and disturbing book
*History Today*
[A] fine book
*Times Literary Supplement*
The story is intriguing for it reveals the lack of insight of many
of the world’s greatest physicists
*Observer*
A new book from Philip Ball is always an eagerly anticipated event,
but this one exceeds expectations
*Literary Review*
Ball examines sensitively the careers of three eminent physicists
who continued to work in Nazi Germany, emphasising the very
different ways in which each dealt (or failed to deal) with the
moral dilemmas of working in an increasingly oppressive state
*Times Higher Education*
Asks important questions, not just about 20th-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
*Times Higher Education*
Ball’s judgements are well reasoned, nuanced and, in my view,
fair
*Guardian*
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