Years ago I looked at the papers Einstein published in 1905, his "miracle year" (also the same year he was awarded his PhD). They were all single-author papers written in German in Annalen der Physik, the leading physics journal in the world at the time.
Looking towards the future, where might American scientists go? In the 1930s and 40s, America was a haven because of its size and its distance away from fighting. In the 21st century, Europe might be less safe due to Russia.
Canada needs to 5x its defense budget... and start a PhD outreach. Tell every American entrepreneur there will be a very minimal/zero tax on equity gains for the first $100 million, but any designated pension/sovereign wealth gets an equity stake at seed round.
Many things Trump says and does, from calling humans "vermin" to punishing news organizations that publish things he doesn't like, to seizing control of cultural institutions: all Nazi stuff.
they refused to engage with "Jewish" science, and I can only hope that the current refusal to engage with "DEI" science will at least keep any similarly catastrophic advancements out of our current admin's hands
I'm reading 'The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann' and the chapter about how Nazi's their University research programs is so striking with the parallels.
my dad was a classics (ancient Greek/Rome) grad student in the 1950s
what he told me - my memory, fwiw - is that many if not most of the Humanites profs from Germany were spurned by Harvard/Yale/Princeton which and wound up at Univ Illinois, which became a world center in classics
As always with oppressive regimes, the academics were largely against the Nazis, and as such were prosecuted just like everyone else who didn’t collaborate with them. Famous scientists who fled the Nazis include Einstein, Bohr, and Schrödinger, all of whom were researching atoms, which led to nukes.
Though some non-collaborators also escaped prosecution by simply being too respected in the community to get rid of without causing even more scientists to leave
Before then, if you wanted to be an effective scientist, you needed to know how to speak German — because so much of the leading-edge literature was in that language.
Now scientists will be well advised to learn Mandarin.
Even with well-documented biases in self-citation, and even without the wholesale autodecapitation of US research that is now underway, China was closing on the US as the world's research powerhouse.
Self-citations, well-organized citation mills, large scale manufacturing of inconsequential tripe that somehow also plugs into citations counts, but no penalties for massive fraud - citations is a legacy metric that is ripe for manipulation.
I am seeing one strong paper after another out of the PRC in fields where I have domain expertise. The things you mention do not make those papers magically disappear.
The fact is that China is investing in fundamental research, and the US is (rapidly) disinvesting. They have the talent pool, and they are spending the money.
Putin also bought several US scientists (including Nobelists), as did Saudis. Some people still think that money can replace everything. Good luck to them.
History repeats itself 3 times: once as a tragedy, and twice more - for the slow on the uptake™
This is why when you want to study physics from before WW2, you should know German, and why when you study physics from after WW2, you should know English. I suspect that the language of science will switch to Mandarin Chinese in this century.
They also eventually got lots of the remaining German scientists (and people) killed because they weren't evil to just their people and the world acted accordingly.
I've been thinking a lot about how 10-15 years ago, US schools were 9 or 10 of the top 10 on CSrankings (along with ETH Zurich) and now they're down to 6, with ETH Zurich, Tsinghua, Shanghai Jiao Tong, and Peking. With Zhejiang climbing at 12.
The US is losing on the first and second derivatives.
An emblematic meme for this tragedy was the emergence of the new field of "German physics" in the 1920s/30s that rejected Quantum Theory and Relativity because they were ... Jewish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
Just letting everyone know that #Canada is open for business. Just like we provided protection for those who resisted committing genocide in Viet Nam, bring your skills north and join our community.
Hitler began by shutting down all science and academia, then the media and then divided the country by hating and attacking Jews with Brown Shirts, Krystal Nacht and the SS. Christian pastors were silent. Completed it all in 53 days. 3rd of Germans stood by while another 1/3 murdered the other 3rd.
when Stalin killed and gulagged most of the Soviet intelligentsia, he also sealed the fate of the URSS. In 50 years they went from a feudal agrarian society to putting men in orbit. then in 30 years it collapsed.
That is Bullshit.
Lotte Albers
Hedwig Eyrich
Hertha Oberhäuser
Helene Sonnemann
Just to name a few women who were doctors in the 3.Reich and had a rather active role in murdering 11.000.000 Humans
Die "Verordnung über die Zulassung von Ärzten zur Tätigkeit bei den Krankenkassen" von 1933 enthält keine Passage, die Frauen die Bestallung verweigerte/aberkannte
Hitler then set about.... “social Darwinism” and “racial hygiene,” which included the removal of all Jewish and female doctors from their posts April and June of 1933. While female doctors still allowed to work in midwifery... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5418743
Your source refers the "Verordnung über die Zulassung von Ärzten zur Tätigkeit bei den Krankenkassen" as a source for their claim.
And at least the Charité and the LMU had both female medical students and doctors during the third reich. Which debunks any claim about gendered bans
When I was in Denmark and we turned the war museum, they let me know that they considered it a National Shame that the Danish joined Hitler and were happy to be called The Master race. Many of the medical atrocity docs and SS officers were Danish.
And the Nazis and their spiritual and actual successors kinda rode that reputation of being a center of science and pretend that their terrible crimes against humanity somehow advanced science in ways that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Which is of course untrue.
@laurahelmuth.bsky.social I apologized to my design students for constantly talking about Germany when talking about fundamental design concepts. Well, that was where these things were developed.
Even pre WW2, the Nazis were inspired by our genocide of native Americans and segregation practices so I guess they were just coming home at that point
Because science is fact based, it threatens Fascist lies. Science especially threatens White Supremacy claims and hair brained schemes and scams pushed by anti-vaxxers andclimate deniers.
strangely enough - one of those german nazi scientists was werner von braun, author of “mars project” in 1953. the main character who is the leader of mars is called “the elon.” errol musk (elons dad) said that he was named after the character in this book - whether that is true is not known.
the dates match up, but errol is known for not being truthful (though, neither is elon) - but the fact remains the book exists and the character on mars is called elon. now, elon musk has a fascination with “occupying mars.” probably a little coincidental that WvB was a nazi also.
That is how one of my professors in undergrad ended up in the United States (Hans Courant was young enough that it was his father who was forced to leave the University of Göttingen).
Fortunately for the rest of us the missed out on developing nukes because the scientists responsible were doing "jew physics" aka just actually physics
Comments
https://www.politico.eu/article/british-jews-germany-brexit-insurance-policy-despite-nazi-legacy/
Until that bastard Indiana Jones stole it from them!
I'll try to post the paragraph later.
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/online/5299/The-scientific-exodus-from-Nazi-Germany
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1119874/
my dad was a classics (ancient Greek/Rome) grad student in the 1950s
what he told me - my memory, fwiw - is that many if not most of the Humanites profs from Germany were spurned by Harvard/Yale/Princeton which and wound up at Univ Illinois, which became a world center in classics
I thought that most German scientists stayed and were either quiet or actually helped
Now scientists will be well advised to learn Mandarin.
History repeats itself 3 times: once as a tragedy, and twice more - for the slow on the uptake™
Good but not great.
The US is losing on the first and second derivatives.
Help to make him fail in his efforts. Support this group.
Highlight any text, right click, and you will see an option to translate the entire page to English.
https://www.kas.de/de/unterstuetzen-sie-uns
Plus ça change...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_Nazi_Germany
https://bsky.app/profile/stcmicrobeblog.bsky.social/post/3lhqv2y73ok2l
Lotte Albers
Hedwig Eyrich
Hertha Oberhäuser
Helene Sonnemann
Just to name a few women who were doctors in the 3.Reich and had a rather active role in murdering 11.000.000 Humans
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5418743
And at least the Charité and the LMU had both female medical students and doctors during the third reich. Which debunks any claim about gendered bans
https://bsky.app/profile/tonylizza.bsky.social/post/3lffmqblhwk2a
They call it anti-Zionism now, because it sounds better. I guess.
But it is the same attitude.
Sad.
To me it's even worse that it often comes from the left these days.
.. Including those who built the first nuclear bombs.
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2024/may/stem-cell-therapy-cures-man-with-type-2-diabetes-chinese-study-claims.html