Redirecting Science: Niels Bohr, Philanthropy, and the Rise of Nuclear Physics [Paperback]

Finn Aaserud (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521530679 | ISBN-13: 978-0521530675 | Publication Date: January 30, 2003

This volume is an important study for understanding the complex interconnections between basic science and its sources of economic support in the period between the two world wars. The focus of the study is on the Institute for Theoretical Physics (later renamed the Niels Bohr Institute) at Copenhagen University, and the role of its director, the eminent Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, in the funding and administration of the Institute. Under Bohr's direction, the Copenhagen Institute was a central workplace in the development and the formulation of quantum mechanics in the 1920s and later became an important center for nuclear research in the 1930s. Dr. Aaserud brings together the scholarhip on the internal origins and development of nuclear physics in the 1930s with descriptions of the concurrent changes in private support for international basic science, particularly as represented by Rockefeller Foundation philanthropy. In the process, the book places the emergence of nuclear physics in a larger historical context. This book will appeal to historians of science, physicists, and advanced students in these areas.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...an invaluable source of information and of documents that prove that Bohr was not only an inspiring physicist and philosopher but also a cunning negotiator who knew how to make use of his reputation for the benefits of science." Science

"Aaserud is therefore to be congratulated for his original, clear--indeed, didactic--work of scholarship and enlightenment, vivified by some 40 photographs, of which the great majority are refreshingly new to the history of physics literature." Paul Forman, Physics Today

"Although Redirecting Science may be of more direct interest to scholars of contemporary physics history, it is so agreeably written that it may find a wider audience." Jeremy Bernstein, Nature

Book Description

An important study for understanding the complex interconnections between basic science and its sources of economic support in the period between the two world wars. The focus of the study is on the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Copenhagen University, and the role of its director, the eminent Danish physicist Niels Bohr, in the funding and administration of the Institute.

Product Details

• Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521530679
• ISBN-13: 978-0521530675
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,809,306 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars skilled director and fund raiser, March 8, 2005

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This review is from: Redirecting Science: Niels Bohr, Philanthropy, and the Rise of Nuclear Physics (Paperback)

There have been several well regarded biographies of Niels Bohr. But Aaserud takes us on a more focused tour. He looks at Bohr's role as director of Copenhagen's Institute of Theoretical Physics, in the 1930s. The intent is to study Bohr's ability as a director, in keeping a nuclear physics research group funded, year after year.

Before the Second World War, this was a far trickier proposition. Then, nuclear physics was seen as pure science; decoupled from the real world. (An attitude that would radically change after the war.) So we see Bohr in a different light. He had clear talents in being able to wheedle funds out of wealthy benefactors. Of course, having the prestige of a Nobel clearly helped!

The book also has an extended discussion of the pre-war refugee problem. Mostly Jews who were denied positions in Nazi Germany, and who sought these at Bohr's institute. He made valiant and often successful attempts to get several of them jobs. But from the vantage point of today, with hindsight, one has to wonder if they should have looked further afield (like outside Europe).