Curated playlist
20th-century German physicists
- Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein once spent his days examining patents for gravel sorters.
- Max PlanckMax Planck called his quantum idea "an act of despair." The cautious physicist launched quantum physics reluctantly.
- Werner HeisenbergA spy once carried a pistol to a Werner Heisenberg lecture, ready to shoot him. Moe Berg did not fire.
- Max BornMax Born won his 1954 Nobel Prize for work he finished nearly three decades earlier.
- Klaus FuchsKlaus Fuchs, a German-born theoretical physicist, gave a plain reason for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Rudolf Peierls, a fellow scientist, visited him in detention shortly after the news of his arrest broke and asked him…
- Heinrich Friedrich WeberHeinrich Friedrich Weber was born on the 7th of November 1843 in Magdala, a small town near Weimar, and died on the 24th of May 1912. He became a German physicist whose name now surfaces mostly in connection with a famous student. Yet…
- Jakob LaubPhysicist Jakob Laub found Einstein still working at a patent office in 1908. He called it a "stair joke of history."
- Emmy NoetherEmmy Noether lectured at Göttingen under a man's name. Her classes were advertised as Hilbert's, with her as assistant.
- Wernher von BraunWernher von Braun's V-2 rocket cost more lives to build than it took as a weapon.
- Otto SternOtto Stern and Walther Gerlach fired silver atoms through a magnetic field in 1922. The atoms landed in two bands.