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The Man Who Stalked Einstein: How Nazi Scientist Philipp Lenard Changed the Course of History
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.
1 pages, Audio CD
First published April 14, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
December 4, 2017
Philipp Lenard was the German physicist and deserved Nobel laureate who became an early convert to Nazism, rose through the power structures of the ascendant Nazi Party and, with his younger sycophant Johannes Starck, for a number of years effectively took over the administration and practice of science in the Reich. A profound and vicious antisemite, he saw Albert Einstein and Einstein's theoretical science as the main focus of his hatred. What Germany needed, Lenard and Starck decreed, was a return to purely experimental science, and an expulsion of theoretical science: "Jew science."
Thousands of Jewish and other theoretical scientists fled the country. Others were consigned to concentration and death camps. Because of this, and because Lenard and Starck rammed outmoded science, bogus science and even outright pseudoscience down the collective throat of the German scientific establishment, which before the rise of the Nazis had been rightly the envy of the world, this vile and evil duo, carrying a banner that effectively read MAKE GERMANY GREAT AGAIN, opened up a roadway that led directly to Germany's humiliating defeat in the war.
In a way, then, we should be very thankful to Philipp Lenard.
This exceptionally readable book is extraordinarily relevant to our own age. Time and again while reading it I felt a shiver down my spine as I recognized alarmingly close parallels between the events described and what's going on today. Lenard and Starck, through their unreasoning denial of genuine science and their imposition of this denialism on Germany's scientific institutions, forced German physics down a dead end and contributed to the destruction of the very country that they claimed to be MAKING GREAT AGAIN. Now look at what, say, Scott Pruitt is doing to the EPA by expelling genuine scientists and bringing in industry shills who'll happily conform to his mind-numbingly infantile rejection of established science. Look at how our current administration has so intimidated climate scientists that, in their grant applications, they're frightened to use the term "climate change." Other examples abound.
I've mentioned that the book's very readable, but it's not without its imperfections. Sometimes it takes its "novelization of the past" a little too far: we don't really know the thoughts running through Himmler's mind as he stared at his desk that frosty October morning, sort of thing. At one point the astrophysicist Arthur Eddington is described as an "explorer," presumably because someone other than the authors wanted to give him a job description and spotted that, in the next paragraph, we're told he mounted expeditions . . . but expeditions to observe solar eclipses, not open up jungle tracts. There's confusion over the words "principle" and "principal" and over the words "emigrate" and "immigrate." And, especially in the earlier parts of the book, there's a tendency toward repetitiousness. I could go on. (There's also a layout cockup on p48.)
But forget all of those criticisms. This is a book that demands to be read if we're to understand the errors that are being perpetrated in our names today, and it's also a page-turner. Hillman, Ertl-Wagner and Wagner have done a splendid job of bringing to life one of science history's most loathsome individuals and exposing the dark motives that drove him.
Thousands of Jewish and other theoretical scientists fled the country. Others were consigned to concentration and death camps. Because of this, and because Lenard and Starck rammed outmoded science, bogus science and even outright pseudoscience down the collective throat of the German scientific establishment, which before the rise of the Nazis had been rightly the envy of the world, this vile and evil duo, carrying a banner that effectively read MAKE GERMANY GREAT AGAIN, opened up a roadway that led directly to Germany's humiliating defeat in the war.
In a way, then, we should be very thankful to Philipp Lenard.
This exceptionally readable book is extraordinarily relevant to our own age. Time and again while reading it I felt a shiver down my spine as I recognized alarmingly close parallels between the events described and what's going on today. Lenard and Starck, through their unreasoning denial of genuine science and their imposition of this denialism on Germany's scientific institutions, forced German physics down a dead end and contributed to the destruction of the very country that they claimed to be MAKING GREAT AGAIN. Now look at what, say, Scott Pruitt is doing to the EPA by expelling genuine scientists and bringing in industry shills who'll happily conform to his mind-numbingly infantile rejection of established science. Look at how our current administration has so intimidated climate scientists that, in their grant applications, they're frightened to use the term "climate change." Other examples abound.
I've mentioned that the book's very readable, but it's not without its imperfections. Sometimes it takes its "novelization of the past" a little too far: we don't really know the thoughts running through Himmler's mind as he stared at his desk that frosty October morning, sort of thing. At one point the astrophysicist Arthur Eddington is described as an "explorer," presumably because someone other than the authors wanted to give him a job description and spotted that, in the next paragraph, we're told he mounted expeditions . . . but expeditions to observe solar eclipses, not open up jungle tracts. There's confusion over the words "principle" and "principal" and over the words "emigrate" and "immigrate." And, especially in the earlier parts of the book, there's a tendency toward repetitiousness. I could go on. (There's also a layout cockup on p48.)
But forget all of those criticisms. This is a book that demands to be read if we're to understand the errors that are being perpetrated in our names today, and it's also a page-turner. Hillman, Ertl-Wagner and Wagner have done a splendid job of bringing to life one of science history's most loathsome individuals and exposing the dark motives that drove him.
March 9, 2016
Bruce J. Hillman, M.D. is Professor of Radiology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and a well known medical researcher. Dr. Hillman tells the little known story of the antagonistic relationship between Albert Einstein and German physicist Philipp Lenard. Both were brilliant German born scientist, both received the Nobel Prize in Physics, Lenard in 1905 and Einstein in 1921. Einstein was a Jew and Lenard an anti-Semite. Their ideals were diametrically opposed to one another as was their scientific viewpoints. Lenard was an experimentalist and developed some of the early instruments for producing x-ray. Einstein was a theorist who specialized in time and space. Lenard hated and publicly mocked Einstein and went on to join the Nazis. Einstein left German for the United States. Hillman makes this story a conflict between a German Jew and a Nazi.
Hillman is a good story teller. The story takes place in the 1920s and 1930s; the time period between World War One and World War Two. With all the similar turmoil in the world today, it is interesting to learn how the world turmoil then resulted in the rise of the Nazis. I think I am going to read John Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Scientist” published in 2003. I understand Cornwell also covers the Lenard-Einstein conflict. For those readers interested in physics and the history of science under the Nazis, this is a great book to read. If you are not interested in science, the reader will be bored as Hillman goes into depth about physics. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Arthur Morey does a good job narrating the book.
Hillman is a good story teller. The story takes place in the 1920s and 1930s; the time period between World War One and World War Two. With all the similar turmoil in the world today, it is interesting to learn how the world turmoil then resulted in the rise of the Nazis. I think I am going to read John Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Scientist” published in 2003. I understand Cornwell also covers the Lenard-Einstein conflict. For those readers interested in physics and the history of science under the Nazis, this is a great book to read. If you are not interested in science, the reader will be bored as Hillman goes into depth about physics. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Arthur Morey does a good job narrating the book.
June 20, 2015
THE MAN WHO STALKED EINSTEIN is the true story of the conflict between renowned scientists Philipp Lenard and Albert Einstein. The conflict was both professional and personal. Lenard, a brilliant physicist by his own right, allowed his arrogance to drive his anti-Semitic values to the point of destroying his objectivity. The result had far reaching effects, ending the promising careers of hundreds of talented persons of science. This is an example where education can be mistaken for true intelligence.
This book, written by Bruce J. Hillman, Birgit Ertl-Wagner and Bernd C. Wagner, was well written and filled with excerpts from many of the physics heroes of the classic age of physics that occurred from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. I highly recommend it.
This book, written by Bruce J. Hillman, Birgit Ertl-Wagner and Bernd C. Wagner, was well written and filled with excerpts from many of the physics heroes of the classic age of physics that occurred from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. I highly recommend it.
July 12, 2022
THE MAN WHO STALKED EINSTEIN is a compelling historical account appealing to phycisists, nonscientists fascinated by the vagaries of Science, students of history, and readers tracking the progress and historical eruptions of Anti-Semitism. It's also appealingly educational about Einstein, rival experimental physicist Philip Lenard, Roentgen (discoverer of X-rays], plus Heisenberg. Schrodinger, Fermi, Teller, Max Born. Although the meat of the book is Historical, concerning German Science in the late 19th century through World War II, the three co-authors also elucidate the lives and personalities involved (including Himmler and Hitler).
December 11, 2018
World War 2 Story
This is an interesting book. It describes the lengths the Germans went through to discredit Einstein as as sciencetist . I had always assumed that it was the usual antiSemitismthat caused him to move to America.But this author shows that he was made a particular target and that he was threatened and his goods stolen by the Nazis before he left
This is an interesting book. It describes the lengths the Germans went through to discredit Einstein as as sciencetist . I had always assumed that it was the usual antiSemitismthat caused him to move to America.But this author shows that he was made a particular target and that he was threatened and his goods stolen by the Nazis before he left
August 15, 2026
Good but…I wish the authors better explored the moment the Nazis realized this so called “Jewish science” was actually legitimate AND failing to fund Heisenberg’s quantum research could cost them the war. Thats the most satisfying part of the story and they just kinda skipped over it.
It felt like a building sneeze that never comes.
It felt like a building sneeze that never comes.
August 27, 2019
Interesting insights into the lives of Einstein and Lenard and the scientific landscape of Nazi Germany.
December 31, 2025
It's such a crazy concept to how far you'll go with hate/ hatred for someone. To deny literal discoveries
June 10, 2015
I enjoyed this book, even though at times it was gloomy and depressing. With the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, it is a great opportunity to reassess how things got so out of hand back then.
Hillman has done an extraordinary research effort to uncover little known facts about the personal persecution Einstein suffered (especially by Philip Lenard, but also by the Nazi regime in search of targets) and he clarifies why it took so long for Einstein to get his Nobel. The book also explains why Einstein’s Nobel was for a lesser known (although quite important) work in photoelectric effects and not for the already world-famous Theory of Relativity.
As a bio-physicist, I’ve had the pleasure (and effort) to read Einstein’s three 1905 papers—in Annalen der Physik. Together, they are a contribution to humanity as big as Newton’s or Galileo’s, and were so ahead of the times it would’ve taken years (or decades) for science to catch up without him. It was not just the great leap of his specific Theory of Relativity, but Einstein’s demonstration of the existence of atoms (doubted by many at the time) and of the ‘atomic’ nature of light (the quantum of light, or photon, a finding that started the Quantum Mechanic’s revolution.)
Hillman (and the Wagners) take us in a deep, dark journey of human folly. Lenard, in particular, ends up depicted as an unredeemable narcissist, always thinking that scientists had stolen discoveries stemming from his experiments. But Einstein himself doesn’t fare so well himself, at times looking like a bumbling and somewhat vindictive man, and others unaware of the growing political chaos that surrounds him. His contribution to the genesis of Quantum Mechanics, the photoelectric paper for which he won the 1921 Nobel (in 1922, as we are told several times in the book) is presented as less important and somewhat derivative of Lenard’s work—that’s not really true. Sure, Lenard observed the effect, but Einstein’s use of the unexplained (fringe) idea of a light quanta (Planck had postulated this, but mostly as a trick to fix an equation) was the first application of subatomic quantification to a real phenomenon—it took a decade for science to understand what it’d meant. Einstein also provided proof of the existence of atoms, and started a revolution on hydrodynamic with his diffusion equations—they’d explain what we now call ‘random walks’—which has become essential to understand molecular reactions in Biology.
At the end, Lenard is exposed not just as an ideological moron (brainwashed by anti-Semitic thought, with some personal help from Hitler himself) but also as a scientist who misses over and over the implications of his discoveries. An “unprepared mind” for sure.
This book might be, in principle, for connoisseurs of the history of Physics (or Einstein’s groupies like me, as I’d realized while reading it that I own 30 books about Einstein) but it also shows, in a dark mirror, how much extreme ideologies can cloud the progress of science and plunge us into another Dark Age of thought. It is sour but necessary medicine to understand our world.
Hillman has done an extraordinary research effort to uncover little known facts about the personal persecution Einstein suffered (especially by Philip Lenard, but also by the Nazi regime in search of targets) and he clarifies why it took so long for Einstein to get his Nobel. The book also explains why Einstein’s Nobel was for a lesser known (although quite important) work in photoelectric effects and not for the already world-famous Theory of Relativity.
As a bio-physicist, I’ve had the pleasure (and effort) to read Einstein’s three 1905 papers—in Annalen der Physik. Together, they are a contribution to humanity as big as Newton’s or Galileo’s, and were so ahead of the times it would’ve taken years (or decades) for science to catch up without him. It was not just the great leap of his specific Theory of Relativity, but Einstein’s demonstration of the existence of atoms (doubted by many at the time) and of the ‘atomic’ nature of light (the quantum of light, or photon, a finding that started the Quantum Mechanic’s revolution.)
Hillman (and the Wagners) take us in a deep, dark journey of human folly. Lenard, in particular, ends up depicted as an unredeemable narcissist, always thinking that scientists had stolen discoveries stemming from his experiments. But Einstein himself doesn’t fare so well himself, at times looking like a bumbling and somewhat vindictive man, and others unaware of the growing political chaos that surrounds him. His contribution to the genesis of Quantum Mechanics, the photoelectric paper for which he won the 1921 Nobel (in 1922, as we are told several times in the book) is presented as less important and somewhat derivative of Lenard’s work—that’s not really true. Sure, Lenard observed the effect, but Einstein’s use of the unexplained (fringe) idea of a light quanta (Planck had postulated this, but mostly as a trick to fix an equation) was the first application of subatomic quantification to a real phenomenon—it took a decade for science to understand what it’d meant. Einstein also provided proof of the existence of atoms, and started a revolution on hydrodynamic with his diffusion equations—they’d explain what we now call ‘random walks’—which has become essential to understand molecular reactions in Biology.
At the end, Lenard is exposed not just as an ideological moron (brainwashed by anti-Semitic thought, with some personal help from Hitler himself) but also as a scientist who misses over and over the implications of his discoveries. An “unprepared mind” for sure.
This book might be, in principle, for connoisseurs of the history of Physics (or Einstein’s groupies like me, as I’d realized while reading it that I own 30 books about Einstein) but it also shows, in a dark mirror, how much extreme ideologies can cloud the progress of science and plunge us into another Dark Age of thought. It is sour but necessary medicine to understand our world.
September 6, 2016
Albert Einstein not only redefined how we look at and interpret the universe, he was also the equivalent of a rock star. People that had no understanding of his theories of relativity flocked to catch a glimpse of him and attend his lectures. Such accolades served to infuriate the Nazi leaders, as well as some of their sympathizers in the scientific community.
The most outspoken and verbally vicious sympathizer was Nobel Laureate Philipp Lenard. Lenard was a German scientist and extreme nationalist who was never able to accept Einstein’s fame, the non-existence of the ether or the fact that Einstein was nominally Jewish. Lenard objects strongly to all aspects of Einstein’s role in the world, he was an early joiner of the Nazi Party, long before it was expedient to do so.
The authors do an excellent job of setting the historical context for the fight between Lenard and Einstein. It is impossible to understand the situation without knowing the bitterness that was generated between scientists as a consequence of World War I. Once the war was over, German scientists were forbidden to attend conferences and were saddled with the war guilt that was placed upon Germany. The act of loyally supporting your country in conflict (on the side of the Central Powers) was considered an act of evil.
Fortunately for the world, the actions of Lenard and the Nazis he supported led to the rapid decline of the practice of physics in Germany. Politically loyal second rate people took the place of the best physicists in Germany and many of those replaced ended up in England or the United States. The authors do an accurate job in explaining this situation and how those expatriates were instrumental in the development of atomic weapons.
This book serves as a demonstration of how the intrusion of politics into science can be so corrosive. As a German physicist said when he read a few pages of Lenard’s manifesto, “One cannot simply rewrite the laws of nature.” Lenard and the Nazis tried to do that and as is so accurately described in this book, ended up as failures.
The most outspoken and verbally vicious sympathizer was Nobel Laureate Philipp Lenard. Lenard was a German scientist and extreme nationalist who was never able to accept Einstein’s fame, the non-existence of the ether or the fact that Einstein was nominally Jewish. Lenard objects strongly to all aspects of Einstein’s role in the world, he was an early joiner of the Nazi Party, long before it was expedient to do so.
The authors do an excellent job of setting the historical context for the fight between Lenard and Einstein. It is impossible to understand the situation without knowing the bitterness that was generated between scientists as a consequence of World War I. Once the war was over, German scientists were forbidden to attend conferences and were saddled with the war guilt that was placed upon Germany. The act of loyally supporting your country in conflict (on the side of the Central Powers) was considered an act of evil.
Fortunately for the world, the actions of Lenard and the Nazis he supported led to the rapid decline of the practice of physics in Germany. Politically loyal second rate people took the place of the best physicists in Germany and many of those replaced ended up in England or the United States. The authors do an accurate job in explaining this situation and how those expatriates were instrumental in the development of atomic weapons.
This book serves as a demonstration of how the intrusion of politics into science can be so corrosive. As a German physicist said when he read a few pages of Lenard’s manifesto, “One cannot simply rewrite the laws of nature.” Lenard and the Nazis tried to do that and as is so accurately described in this book, ended up as failures.
February 9, 2017
I learned some interesting things from this book about Einstein's life, but the title didn't seem to quite match the contents of the book.
January 29, 2015
With an attention-grabbing title I was eager to read this. Although it wasn't quite what I expected, I still found it an interesting read. The politics of physics as Einstein began making a name for himself,was eye-opening. I realize that back- biting occurs in most if not all academic and research arenas, but the lack of respect and vitriolic atmosphere was fascinating. The more scientific passages slowed down the flow a bit. But the rise of Hitler and the decimation of the German scientific community presented a good history.
I have a little trouble accepting Wikipedia as a source in a serious work. I think with some good editing to "firm up" some of the narrative, this will be a good solid book on an interesting subject.
I have a little trouble accepting Wikipedia as a source in a serious work. I think with some good editing to "firm up" some of the narrative, this will be a good solid book on an interesting subject.
June 3, 2015
Albert Einstein’s scientific revolution not only upended the scientific world, it stirred controversy in the areas of religion, philosophy and politics. Philipp Lenard was a renowned German scientist, and Nobel Laureate (1905) who refused to accept Einstein’s relativity, for both scientific and philosophical reasons. Instead, he allied himself with Adolph Hitler and used the Nazi party to exile Einstein and many of Europe’s greatest Jewish scientists. Unwittingly, Lenard’s Antisemitism gave the West an unbeatable scientific advantage during World War II, and guaranteed that the West gained atomic power before the Germans. This is an easily read account of how science and politics intersected to change the course of world history during those critical years.
November 6, 2016
If you enjoy reading about science and history, and if you are a fan of Albert Einstein and find yourself tuning into the History channel to watch documentaries about WWII...Well, this is a book that is right up your alley. I liked it for all of the above reasons. It seemed to be very well researched. Try it, you'll like it...
August 4, 2015
Great story, dry delivery.
April 3, 2016
The title not withstanding, this turned out to be an interesting book about the difficulties that Einstein and other jewish scientists had to endure in the 1920's and 1930's. Chilling really...
October 20, 2016
Good information but not well connected. Book didn't correspond to the title.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews