The Man Who Stalked Einstein

How Nazi Scientist Philipp Lenard Changed the Course of History

By (author) Bruce J. Hillman, Birgit Ertl-Wagner, Bernd C. Wagner

Hardback - £19.99

Publication date:

14 June 2015

Length of book:

228 pages

Publisher

Lyons Press

ISBN-13: 9781493010011

By the end of World War I, Albert Einstein had become the face of the new science of theoretical physics and had made some powerful enemies. One of those enemies, Nobel Prize winner Philipp Lenard, spent a career trying to discredit him. Their story of conflict, pitting Germany’s most widely celebrated Jew against the Nazi scientist who was to become Hitler’s chief advisor on physics, had an impact far exceeding what the scientific community felt at the time. Indeed, their mutual antagonism affected the direction of science long after 1933, when Einstein took flight to America and changed the history of two nations. The Man Who Stalked Einstein details the tense relationship between Einstein and Lenard, their ideas and actions, during the eventful period between World War I and World War II.
In this title, the differences between theoretical and experimental physics are embodied respectively by Einstein and Philipp Lenard, a virulently anti-Semitic German physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905. Hillman describes how, unable to prove the existence of the long-popular notion of 'ether,' in debt, and jealous of the attention paid Einstein, Lenard abandoned his early admiration of the younger man and escalated his ad hominem attacks on his fellow Nobel winner for more than 20 years. The book relies in part on original works in German, thanks to Birgit Ertl-Wagner and Bernd C. Wagner’s translations for Hillman, adding a new perspective to the study of Einstein. It includes fascinating biographical information on both men. . . .Hillman has succeeded in his goal to 'write a history…that read(s) like a novel,' opening at the scene of a Nazi book burning. This very accessible popular science book will engage readers interested in physics, World War II, history, and biography.