This volume, occasioned by the centenary of the Fritz Haber Institute, formerly the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, covers the institute's scientific and institutional history from its founding until the present. The institute was among the earliest established by the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, and its inauguration was one of the first steps in the development of Berlin-Dahlem into a center for scientific research. Its establishment was made possible by an endowment from Leopold Koppel, granted on the condition that Fritz Haber, well-known for his discovery of a method to synthesize ammonia from its elements, be made its director. The history of the institute has largely paralleled that of 20th-century Germany. It undertook controversial weapons research during World War I, followed by a "Golden Era" during the 1920s, in spite of financial hardships. Under the National Socialists it experienced a purge of its scientific staff and a diversion of its research into the service of the new regime, accompanied by a breakdown in its international relations. In the immediate aftermath of World War II it suffered crippling material losses, from which it recovered slowly in the post-war era. In 1953, shortly after taking the name of its founding director, the institute joined the fledgling Max Planck Society. During the 1950s and 60s, the institute supported diverse researches into the structure of matter and electron microscopy in a territorially insular and politically precarious West-Berlin. In subsequent decades, as both Berlin and the Max Planck Society underwent significant changes, the institute reorganized around a board of coequal scientific directors and a renewed focus on the investigation of elementary processes on surfaces and interfaces, topics of research that had been central to the work of Fritz Haber and the first "Golden Era" of the institute.

Who is Ivan Stranski, you ask? If you Google his name you will find thousands of sites that talk about him. In fact, the Kossel-Stranski model of crystal growth and the Stranski-Krastanov mode of growth of thin epitaxial films are named after him — just two of the many scientific ideas and concepts Professor Stranski introduced to science (and through which a whole new field in science was born). Today thousands of physicists, chemists and materials scientists all over the world are working in the field of crystal growth, particularly in epitaxial growth and nucleation which are necessary for the invention of new materials and high technologies. In this respect, the life, personality and way of thinking of this remarkable scientist should be of great interest to both beginners and professionals in science.This book describes the life and scientific achievements of Ivan Stranski, Bulgarian-German physical chemist and the father of crystal growth, against the historical backdrop of wars, massacres, and remarkable scientific discoveries in the 20th century. It covers his family roots, which are remarkable in their own right, his life and career both in Bulgaria and Germany (West Berlin), and his scientific achievements, including his most important contribution to the physics of crystal growth.The book captures Professor Stranski's personality and way of thinking as much as possible from the recollections of his disciples and contemporaries. Short biographical notes about his most renowned students in Bulgaria, Rostislaw Kaischew and Lyubomir Krastanov, with whom Stranski developed his most fundamental ideas are also included.

This book tells the stories of scientists from Germany and other European countries who vanished during World War II. These erudite scholars contributed to diverse scientific fields and were associated with some of the world's leading universities and research institutions. Despite their proficiency, they all sought help from agencies to relocate to the UK in the 1930s, but were unable to secure the necessary assistance.The Lost Scientists of World War II explores the fascinating narratives of thirty of these scientific refugees, delving into the reasons behind the unavailability of aid and presenting fresh insights into the tragic fates or astounding survival experiences of these individuals.

This book offers a history of the instrumentation used to materialize the early thought experiments devised in the Einstein-Bohr disputes over the foundations of quantum mechanics. It shows how the second world war and cold war fostered the development of materials, instruments, and systems that made it possible to create, manipulate, and detect single quantum systems, thus creating the material conditions for experiments in foundations of quantum mechanics and for a broad spectrum of experimental inquiries on the structure and properties of matter which underlay the creation of new research fields such as quantum optics, quantum information, and atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Discussing research and development performed in diverse contexts, this book reveals how physicists carried instruments, and the knowledge they embodied, through disciplinary and geographic frontiers to probe entanglement, a most intriguing feature of the quantum world.

Presented here is the story of the mining and sale of uranium and radium ore through biographical vignettes, chemistry, physics, geology, geography, occupational health, medical utilization, environmental safety and industrial history. Included are the people and places involved over the course of over 90 years of interconnected mining and sale of radium and uranium, finally ending in 1991 with the abandonment of radium paint and medical devices, Soviet nuclear parity, and the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

In twentieth-century Germany, Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer rose to prominence as a brilliant physical chemist, even as several of his relatives—Dietrich Bonhoeffer among them—became involved in the resistance to Hitler, leading to their executions. This book traces the entanglement of science, religion, and politics in the Third Reich and in the lives of Karl-Friedrich, his family and his colleagues, including Fritz Haber and Werner Heisenberg. Nominated for the Nobel Prize, Karl-Friedrich was an expert on heavy water, a component of the atomic bomb. During the war, he was caught in the middle between relatives who were trying to kill Hitler and friends who were helping Hitler build a nuclear weapon. Karl-Friedrich emerges as a complex figure—an agnostic whose brother was a renowned theologian, and a chemist who both reluctantly advised German nuclear scientists and collaborated with Paul Rosbaud, a spy for the British. Illuminating the uneasy position of science in twentieth-century Germany, The Scientific World of Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer is the story of a man in love with chemistry, his family, and his nation, trying to do right by all of them in the midst of chaos.

A history of the gas mask in Germany from first use in combat in 1915 to the eve of the Second World War. Peter Thompson traces how the development and proliferation of chemical protective technologies like the gas mask produced new subjective relationships to danger, risk, management and mastery in the modern age of mass destruction.