Hitler’s Scientists by John Cornwell and recovery

A trip to the local Waldenbooks resulted in the purchase of a deeply discounted book, “Hitler’s Scientists”. Back problems due to an unscheduled dismount and impact with the cross-rail have resulted in much time for reading while my wife goes out riding leaving the dog and I to vegetate in the condo. The book’s content was a mystery. Would it be about Mengele and experiments in the concentration camps or the collaboration of other scientists with the Nazi regime? It has some of all this but also includes sections on the development of industrial chemistry, nuclear physics and quantum mechanics in the late 19th and early 20th century to provide background. Much of the book describes the forced exodus of Jewish scientists to England and the U.S. with the resulting negative impact on the Nazi nuclear bomb program. If Hitler had not thrown out his Jewish theoretical physicists he might have had the bomb first. In fact, the whole of theoretical physics was called, “Jewish physics”, in contrast to applied or Aryan physics. The book includes an excelled description of the development of the understanding of nuclear fission and the different discoveries that lead systematically to a practical atomic bomb. It is especially good at describing the personalities their historical context. My reading has included books on quantum mechanics and most recently Maxwell’s equations in an effort to better understand the development of these areas and how they have lead to modern theories of cosmology. So, what looked like a history of technology in the Third Reich turns out to also be an excellent exposition of the individuals and development of modern chemistry and physics.